Mass Imprisonment and the Life Course: Race and Class Inequality in U.S. Incarceration

Pettit, Becky; Western, Bruce

doi:10.1177/000312240406900201

Cited by 1,082 publications

(878 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…The Civil Rights revolution of the mid-20th century produced major legal reforms, including federal bans on racial discrimination in employment, education, housing, and credit. Despite gains in formal equality, racial inequality persists in each of those same domainsemployment (Pager et al 2009), education (Lewis and Diamond 2015), housing (Rugh and Massey 2014), credit (Hwang et al 2015), and others, including child welfare (Roberts 2003, PutnamHornstein et al 2013 and criminal justice (Pettit and Western 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Standardizing Biases: Selection Devices and the Quantification of Race

Hirschman¹,

Bosk²

2017

Preprint

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Abstract:Racial inequality persists despite major advances in formal, legal equality. Scholars and policymakers argue that individual biases (both explicit and implicit) combine with subjective organizational decision-making practices to perpetuate racial inequality. The standardization of decision-making offers a potential solution, promising to eliminate the subjectivity that biases consequential decisions. We ask, under what conditions may standardization reduce racial inequality? Drawing on research in science studies and law and society, we argue that standardization must be understood as a heterogeneous practice capable of producing very different outcomes depending on the details of the standard and the organizational infrastructure surrounding its use. We compare "selection devices" -simple quantified tools for making allocation decisions -in undergraduate admissions and child welfare to highlight the complex relationships between race and standardization. Child welfare agencies adopted a colorblind actuarial device that attempted to predict which children were most at risk, and then make decisions based on those predictions. In contrast, the University of Michigan's points system explicitly considered and valued race, with the goal of increasing minority student enrollments in the context of promoting student body diversity. Comparing these cases demonstrates how actuarial standardization practices, including those adopted with the intention of reducing racial inequality, tend to reinforce an unequal status quo by ideologically reconfiguring mutable social structures into immutable individual risk factors. In contrast, non-actuarial practices that explicitly promote racial equality are vulnerable to political challenges, as they violate norms of colorblindness and cannot be defended in terms of their predictive validity.Acknowledgements:

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Standardizing Biases: Selection Devices and the Quantification of Race

Hirschman¹,

Bosk²

2017

Preprint

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“…Under current conditions of historically high imprisonment rates, incarceration has become a regular part of the hardship associated with American poverty (4,5). Men and women who go to prison present a range of co-occurring disadvantages and vulnerabilities that make them difficult to contact or unwilling to participate in research studies.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Study retention as bias reduction in a hard-to-reach population

Western

Braga

Hureau

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Collecting data from hard-to-reach populations is a key challenge for research on poverty and other forms of extreme disadvantage. With data from the Boston Reentry Study (BRS), we document the extreme marginality of released prisoners and the related difficulties of study retention and analysis. Analysis of the BRS data yields three findings. First, released prisoners show high levels of "contact insecurity," correlated with social insecurity, in which residential addresses and contact information change frequently. Second, strategies for data collection are available to sustain very high rates of study participation. Third, survey nonresponse in highly marginal populations is strongly nonignorable, closely related to social and economic vulnerability. The BRS response rate of 94% over a 1-y follow-up period allows analysis of hypothetically high nonresponse rates. In this setting, nonresponse attenuates regression estimates in analyses of housing insecurity, drug use, and unemployment. These results suggest that in the analysis of very poor and disadvantaged populations, methods that maximize study participation reduce bias and yield data that can usefully supplement large-scale household or administrative data collections. Under current conditions of historically high imprisonment rates, incarceration has become a regular part of the hardship associated with American poverty (4, 5). Men and women who go to prison present a range of co-occurring disadvantages and vulnerabilities that make them difficult to contact or unwilling to participate in research studies. Involvement in crime and the criminal justice system also makes study subjects elusive for researchers. As a result, follow-up studies of the formerly incarcerated have suffered from high rates of attrition that are likely correlated with outcomes of key interest. The incarcerated population has been called "invisible men" because of their underenumeration in social survey estimates of socioeconomic well-being (6). Because of their deep marginality in social and economic life, invisibility in social science data collection also extends to those who have moved from incarceration to communities.We explore survey nonresponse in a highly disadvantaged population using data from the Boston Reentry Study (BRS), a small longitudinal survey of newly released prisoners. Earlier longitudinal studies of released prisoners suffered from 30% to 60% attrition over a 1-to 2-y follow-up period (7,8). In contrast, the BRS followed Massachusetts state prisoners through the first year of prison release, achieving a response rate of 94%.The unusually high response rate allows us to explore three main challenges to research and data collection in highly disadvantaged populations. First, we document extreme social insecurity in the BRS sample that is closely associated with a high level of contact insecurity-the frequent changing of residential addresses and phone numbers that makes nonresponse more likely. Second, we describe a variety of strategies for data collection tha...

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“…Researchers have long noted the over-representation of African Americans in U.S. prison populations (Higginbotham, 1996), due largely to inequality in incarceration policies (Pettit & Western, 2004). Last, following Pettit and Western (2004), we control for the population over 25 without a high school diploma. More state residents without a high school diploma should associate positively with state prison populations.…”

Section: Incarceratementioning

confidence: 99%

Legislature Size and Non-Elite Populations Theory and Corroborating Evidence

Schraufnagel¹,

Bingle²

2015

JPL

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This research tests the association between legislature size and the size of 'non-elite' populations in the American states. The theoretical assumption is that larger legislatures will be populated by a more diverse group of members, who will better represent and advocate for non-elites. Data are drawn from three time periods, which captures considerable variation in important variables, and provides a robust test of association between the size of state legislatures and certain sub-populations. The research demonstrates that larger Lower Chambers are marginally associated with a lower percentage of adults without a high school diploma, easily associated with a larger percentage of the states' poor receiving Medicaid, and also related to smaller state prison populations. This is the case after controlling for demographic and economic factors that also predict the size of these sub-populations. The findings suggest legislature size plays a role in dominant contemporary policy arenas and that there may be societal benefits associated with larger-more diverse-assemblies.

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Mass Imprisonment and the Life Course: Race and Class Inequality in U.S. Incarceration

Cited by 1,082 publications

References 43 publications

Standardizing Biases: Selection Devices and the Quantification of Race

Standardizing Biases: Selection Devices and the Quantification of Race

Study retention as bias reduction in a hard-to-reach population

Legislature Size and Non-Elite Populations Theory and Corroborating Evidence

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