Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Prison Admissions Across Counties: An Evaluation of Racial/Ethnic Threat, Socioeconomic Inequality, and Political Climate Explanations

Abstract

Previous macro-level studies of racial and ethnic disparities in prison admissions have focused narrowly on differences in offending and have limited their analyses to national- and state-level data. This study explores three alternative explanations for inequality in prison admissions for Blacks and Latinos compared to Whites: racial/ethnic threat, socioeconomic inequality, and the political and legal climate. I analyze data from multiple county- and state-level sources and employ hierarchical linear modeling techniques to examine the role of both county- and state-level factors in producing inequality in county-level prison admission rates. Findings indicate that Black–White disparities are lower in jurisdictions with greater shares of Black citizens; however, the reverse is true for Latino–White inequality. For both comparisons, political conservatism is associated with less inequality. Results also indicate that counties with greater parity in income and employment across race/ethnicity and that are located in the South have reduced racial/ethnic disparities in prison admissions. I argue that the presence of large shares of African Americans and of Republican voters, in addition to southern location, are likely better indicators of total prison admission rates than of racial/ethnic disparities in prison admissions.

The Value of Social Control: Racial Resentment, Punitiveness, and White Support for Spending on Law Enforcement

“…Finally, we draw from group threat literature which consistently finds a linkage between the local racial composition and political attitudes of whites (Durante 2017). This relationship is frequently operationalized as “percent black,” indicating the perceived degree of racial group threat occurring locally, with a higher proportion of black residents being associated with more conservative, punitive, and resentful attitudes among white respondents (Avery and Fine 2012; Holmes et al 2008; Weitzer 1999).…”

“…This relationship is frequently operationalized as “percent black,” indicating the perceived degree of racial group threat occurring locally, with a higher proportion of black residents being associated with more conservative, punitive, and resentful attitudes among white respondents (Avery and Fine 2012; Holmes et al 2008; Weitzer 1999). It is critical to note that this relationship is nonlinear, with this effect rising to approximately the 40 percent threshold, beyond which the direction of the effect generally reverses (Avery and Fine 2012; Durante 2017; Holmes et al 2008). We include the percent black at the county level from the 2010 Census for each respondent in each GSS model, along with a quadratic term (percent black squared) to account for the nonlinearity of this effect.…”

“…Another mechanism is outlined in a subsection of the broader group threat literature, finding that the presence of a racial out-group represents a threat to whites, who respond with increased support for more punitive Criminal Justice policy (Carll 2017; Durante 2017; Holmes 2000; Pickett et al 2014). This line of research finds that white people tend to respond to large or growing proportions 1 of non-whites as an economic, political, and public safety threat and thus respond with support for policies aimed at neutralizing or controlling that threat.…”

The Racialized Consequences of Jail Incarceration on Local Labor Markets

“…At the macro level, racial threat theories suggest that harsher jail incarceration would be more likely in areas with larger proportions of people of color, because such demographic changes would be viewed as a threat to the political and economic influence of the White population, prompting more severe social control of those perceived threats (Durante, 2020;Duxbury, 2021). Some research testing racial threat theory has found that high Black populations are associated with racial disparities in prison incarceration rates (Myers & Talarico, 1987;Weidner, Frase & Schultz, 2005) and police force size (Kent & Jacobs, 2005), but other studies have not found empirical support for the association between racial threat and arrests (Ousey & Lee, 2008;Parker, Stults & Rice, 2005), incarceration decisions (Ulmer & Johnson, 2004), or…”

County-Level Context and Sentence Lengths for Black, Latinx, and White Individuals Sentenced to Prison: A Multi-Level Assessment

“…Other research has found no relationship between employment status (Chen, 2013;Spohn & Holleran, 2000) or educational attainment (Franklin, 2017) and sentence length; however, because measures of inequality or social class are rarely collected in criminal justice data, the inequalitypunishment hypothesis is difficult to test. Finally, there is contextual-level support tying socioeconomic inequality to punishment; for example, state-level Black-White disparities in poverty and unemployment have been found to predict Black-White imprisonment disparities (Yates, 1997;Yates & Fording, 2005), and counties with less socioeconomic inequality between racial and ethnic groups are found to have smaller racial and ethnic disparities in prison admissions (Durante, 2020).…”