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The United States has witnessed privatization of a variety of government functions over the last three decades. Media and politicians often attribute the decision to privatize to ideological commitments to small government and fiscal pressure. These claims are particularly notable in the context of prison privatization, where states and the federal government have employed private companies to operate and manage private correctional facilities. I argue that state prison privatization is not a function of simple ideological or economic considerations. Rather, prison privatization has been an unintended consequence of the administrative and legal costs associated with litigation brought by prisoners. I assemble an original database of prison privatization in the United States and demonstrate that the privatization of prisons is best predicted by the legal pressure on state corrections systems, rather than the ideological orientation of a state government.

Conversations around criminal legal reform often center around prosecutorial discretion. Yet, we know little about how the demographic characteristics of prosecutors influence case outcomes and race- and sex-based carceral disparities. I investigate this question using an original dataset of all county prosecutors in the US in 2001 and 2007 and find some differences between non-white and female prosecutors and white and male prosecutors. Black prosecutors are associated with fewer felony closures and convictions, Latinx prosecutors are associated with lower Latinx jail populations, and female prosecutors are associated with lower female and Black jail populations, lower Black prison admissions, and lower jail admissions rates. These findings suggest prosecutorial discretion is an important plank of criminal legal reform, and increasing the diversity of those offices may act as an important and initial step to limit the negative effects of the carceral state on particular communities.

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The degree to which female political actors influence policy is hotly debated in political science. However, relatively little research considers how women’s representation in the police influences policing outcomes. We argue that increasing women’s representation should be associated with increases in rape report rates but should not be associated with changes in rape arrest rates. We expect public perceptions of female police to affect victims’ willingness to report and cooperate with the police, but the masculine, hierarchical, and complex nature of police investigations of rape will make it difficult for those increases in reporting to translate into increases in arrests for those crimes. We leverage unique police administrative data from 1987 to 2016 and find that although women’s representation is associated with increased rape report rates, there is no relationship with rape arrest rates, highlighting an important justice gap. Our article has implications not only for the study of female representation and representative bureaucracy but also provides insights into how descriptive representation may be limited by institutional culture, norms, practices, and procedures.