Partisan Politics, Electoral Competition and Imprisonment: An Analysis of States Over Time*

Abstract

The now well‐documented explosion in prison populations over the last 30 years has spurred significant attention in the literature. Early research focused primarily on economic explanations. More recently it has focused on political explanations of prison growth. Here we extend research on political explanations of imprisonment by drawing on the literature on state politics and public policy. We argue that the effect of partisan politics on punishment is conditional on how much electoral competition legislators face. We test this hypothesis using annual state level data on imprisonment from 1978 to 1996. Our findings show that the effect of Republican state legislative strength on prison admissions depends on time and the level of competition in state legislative elections. We argue that these findings suggest the need for a more nuanced understanding of the link between partisan U.S. politics and imprisonment.

Race and Women’s Imprisonment: Poverty, African American Presence, and Social Welfare

“…Studies show that growth in the percent of the population that is African-American or nonwhite is associated with increases in public support for criminal punishment (Baumer et al 2003;King and Wheelock 2007), spending on corrections (Jacobs and Helms 1999;Stucky et al 2007), police strength and relative size of law enforcement agencies (Liska et al 1981;Jackson 1989;D'Alessio et al 2005;Stults and Baumer 2007), incarceration rates (Jacobs and Helms 1996;Beckett and Western 2001;Greenberg and West 2001;Jacobs and Carmichael 2001;Sorensen and Stemen 2002) and use of capital punishment Carmichael 2002, 2004). The findings regarding the influence of increases in Latino populations are less clear, however, with one study reporting an association with imprisonment rates (Jacobs and Carmichael 2001) and others finding no relationship once other relevant variables are controlled (Greenberg and West 2001;Stucky et al 2005). On balance, the empirical evidence is generally supportive of the minority presence thesis, in which increases in African American populations are associated with increases in punitive criminal justice responses.…”

A Bigger Piece of the Pie? State Corrections Spending and the Politics of Social Order

“…Beckett and Western 2001;Greenberg and West 2001;Helms 1996, 2001;Carlson 1999, 2000;Smith 2004;Stucky, Heimer, and Lang 2005). Although early research on punishment focused primarily on economic explanations (see Chiricos and Delone 1992 for a review), more recent research has focused on political explanations, generally focusing on prison populations rather than corrections expenditures.…”

Who Survives on Death Row? An Individual and Contextual Analysis

“…4 By focusing on street crime and other social problems readily blamed on underclass minorities, Republicans won elections by using this "wedge" issue to gain sufficient votes from less prosperous citizens. Multiple findings show that Republican (Jacobs and Carmichael 2001;Stucky et al 2005;Western 2006) or conservative political strength (Sutton 2000) led to severe criminal justice outcomes. Because capital punishment has been an important issue in many state political campaigns (Constanzo 1997) and because Jacobs and Carmichael (2002) find that this punishment is likely to be legal in states with the strongest Republican parties, we expect that greater Republican political strength in a state should increase execution probabilities.…”

“…Many studies use individual data to explain trial court sentencing, but others rely on aggregate data to study additional criminal justice outcomes. State or national attributes have been used to explain shifts in incarceration rates (Jacobs and Carmichael 2001;Jacobs and Helms 1996;Stucky, Heimer, and Lang 2005;Sutton 2000;Western 2006). The urban conditions that explain police department size (Jacobs 1979;Kent and Jacobs 2005), arrest rates (Brown and Warner 1992), or the use of deadly force by the police (Jacobs and O'Brien 1998) have been researched as well.…”