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Mass Incarceration (mass + incarceration)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Law and Criminology80%

Selected Abstracts

ASSESSING THE EFFECTS OF MASS INCARCERATION ON INFORMAL SOCIAL CONTROL IN COMMUNITIES

CRIMINOLOGY AND PUBLIC POLICY, Issue 2 2004
JAMES P. LYNCH
Research Summary: This paper reviews and evaluates the existing (and limited) evidence that increases in incarceration have affected the ability of residential neighborhoods to perform their traditional social control functions. It suggests that, although comparatively weak, the evidence points to the increases in the level and clustering in social and geographic space of incarceration as contributing to changes in the social organization of affected communities by weakening family formation, labor force attachments, and patterns of social interaction among residents. At the same time, however, the paper does find support for the contention that incarceration leads to reductions in crime in affected communities. Policy Implications: To the extent that mass incarceration disrupts patterns of social interaction, weakens community social organization, and decreases the stigma of imprisonment, its longer-run effects may be to reduce its effectiveness. [source]

Downsizing Prisons: How to Reduce Crime and End Mass Incarceration.

LAW & SOCIETY REVIEW, Issue 3 2006
By Michael Jacobson
No abstract is available for this article. [source]

THE EFFECT OF COUNTY-LEVEL PRISON POPULATION GROWTH ON CRIME RATES,

CRIMINOLOGY AND PUBLIC POLICY, Issue 2 2006
TOMISLAV V. KOVANDZIC
Research Summary: Prior macro-level studies examining the impact of prison population growth on crime rates have produced widely varying results. Studies using national-level time series data find large impacts of prison growth on crime, whereas those using state panel data find more modest ones. Critics of the former studies maintain that the estimates are implausibly large, arguing that the effects are instead due to analysts' inability to control for potential confounding factors. Conversely, critics of the latter studies argue that they underestimate the total impacts of imprisonment by failing to account for potential free-riding effects. This study uses panel data for 58 Florida counties for 1980 to 2000 to reexamine the link between prison population growth and crime. Unlike previous studies, we find no evidence that increases in prison population growth covary with decreases in crime rates. Policy Implications: Our findings suggest that Florida policymakers carefully weigh the costs and benefits of their continued reliance on mass incarceration against the potential costs and benefits of alternatives. If the costs of mass incarceration do not return appreciable benefits, i.e., a reduction in crime, it is time to reconsider our approach to crime and punishment. Other research offers evidence of crime prevention programs operating inside the criminal justice system and in communities that hold promise for reducing crime; our findings indicate that policymakers carefully consider these options as a way to achieve their goals. [source]

ASSESSING THE EFFECTS OF MASS INCARCERATION ON INFORMAL SOCIAL CONTROL IN COMMUNITIES

CRIMINOLOGY AND PUBLIC POLICY, Issue 2 2004
JAMES P. LYNCH
Research Summary: This paper reviews and evaluates the existing (and limited) evidence that increases in incarceration have affected the ability of residential neighborhoods to perform their traditional social control functions. It suggests that, although comparatively weak, the evidence points to the increases in the level and clustering in social and geographic space of incarceration as contributing to changes in the social organization of affected communities by weakening family formation, labor force attachments, and patterns of social interaction among residents. At the same time, however, the paper does find support for the contention that incarceration leads to reductions in crime in affected communities. Policy Implications: To the extent that mass incarceration disrupts patterns of social interaction, weakens community social organization, and decreases the stigma of imprisonment, its longer-run effects may be to reduce its effectiveness. [source]

Discipline and Devolution: Constructions of Poverty, Race, and Criminality in the Politics of Rural Prison Development

ANTIPODE, Issue 3 2009
Anne Bonds
Abstract:, The soaring expansion of the US prison population is transforming the geographies of both urban and rural landscapes. As the trend in mass incarceration persists, depressed rural spaces are increasingly associated with rising prison development and the increasing criminalization of rural communities of disadvantage. Drawing on in-depth archival and interview research in rural communities in the Northwestern states of Idaho and Montana, this paper explores how cultural productions of poverty and exclusion intersect with rural prison development. I examine how representations of poverty and criminality are entangled with processes of economic restructuring and the localization of economic development and social welfare. I explore the ways in which the rural prison geography of the Northwest is linked to the material and discursive construction of those in poverty and how these narratives are produced through local relations of race, ethnicity, and class. I suggest that the mobilization of these constructions legitimates rural prison expansion, increasingly punitive social and criminal justice policies, and the retrenchment of racialized and classed inequality. Further, I argue that these discursive imaginations of the poor work to obscure the central dynamics producing poverty under the neoliberal restructuring of rural economies and governance. [source]