The Growth of Incarceration in the United States Exploring Causes and Consequences (2014) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
2 Rising Incarceration Rates
2 Rising Incarceration Rates
Pages 33-69
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 33... ...
From its high point in 2009 and 2010, the population of state and federal prisoners declined slightly in 2011 and 2012. Still, the incarceration rate, including those in jail, was 707 per 100,000 in 2012, more than four times the rate in 1972.
|
From page 34... ...
To this end, it summarizes two lines of research: the first relates trends in imprisonment to trends in rate of arrests per crime and the chances of prison admission, while the second focuses on the high rate of incarceration among African Americans, calculating how much of the racial disparity in incarceration can be explained by racial disparities in arrests and offending. The following section elaborates on the analysis of racial disparity in incarceration by reporting incarceration rates for whites and minorities, at different ages and different levels of education.
|
From page 35... ...
. The jail population series was constructed from various Sourcebook Figure 2-1 total adult correctional tables on the population, including Table 6.1.2011, which encompasses the period 1980-2011.
|
From page 36... ...
European statistics on incarceration are compiled by the Council of Europe, and international incarceration rates are recorded as well by the International Centre for Prison Studies (IPS) at the University of Essex in the United Kingdom.
|
From page 37... ...
Trends in Prison and Jail Populations Discussion and analysis of the U.S. penal system generally focus on three main institutions for adult penal confinement: state prisons, federal prisons, and local jails.
|
From page 38... ...
. Trends in the Federal Prison Population Federal prisons incarcerate people sentenced for federal crimes, so the mix of offenses among their populations differs greatly from that of state prisons.
|
From page 39... ...
Beginning from a much smaller base, the federal prison population grew at a much faster rate than the state prison and local jail populations in the 1980s and 1990s. Even in the 2000s, when penal populations in state and local institutions had almost ceased to grow, the population of the federal system increased in size by more than 40 percent from 2001 to 2010.
|
From page 40... ...
. The jail population is about one-half the size of the combined state and federal prison population and since the early 1970s has grown about as rapidly as the state prison population.
|
From page 41... ...
If probationers or parolees violate the conditions of their supervision, they risk revocation and subsequent incarceration. In recent decades, an increasing proportion of all state prison admissions have been due to parole violations (Petersilia, 2003, pp.
|
From page 42... ...
. As discussed above, the period from 1972 to 2000 was a time of rapid growth for state prison populations; the change in incarceration rates in this period is indicated for each state in blue.
|
From page 43... ...
Some evidence indicates a new dynamic emerging over the last decade, as growth in state incarceration rates has slowed significantly across the nation.
|
From page 44... ...
The analysis, which draws extensively on work by Alfred Blumstein and Allen Beck conducted at the committee's request, also provides a rough estimate of the extent to which the incarceration increase over the period is attributable to changes in sentencing policy rather than other factors, including changes in crime rates. The following sections decompose the growth in the penal population from 1980 to 2010 into components related to crime, the rate
|
From page 45... ...
Their analysis examines trends in crime, arrests admissions, and time served for drug offenses, burglary, aggravated assault, robbery, rape, and murder. Trends in Crime Changes in crime rates affect the numbers of people subject to arrest, conviction, and sentencing and are thus a key source of changes in incarceration rates.
|
From page 46... ...
From the early 1990s, crime rates began to fall broadly for the following two decades. Property and violent crime show roughly similar trends, although the property crime rate peaked in 1979, while violence continued to rise through the mid-1980s after falling in the first half of the decade.
|
From page 47... ...
and Beck and Blumstein (2012) for state prison populations, looking separately at trends for drug offenses, burglary, aggravated assault, robbery, and murder for the period 1980 to 2010.
|
From page 48... ...
. Figure 2-7 the average incarceration rate for all crimes of Western European countries and is twice the average incarceration rate for all crimes, including pretrial detainees, of a significant number of European countries.
|
From page 49... ...
From 1980 to 1989, the arrest rate for possession and use offenses in creased by 89 percent. After a 2-year period of decline, the drug arrest rate 5 At the federal level, the increase in incarceration has been closely correlated with the in crease in numbers of convictions.
|
From page 50... ...
In short, the great escalation in drug enforcement that dates from the late 1970s is associated with an increase in the relative arrest rate among African Americans that is unrelated to relative rates of drug use and the limited available evidence on drug dealing. Prison Admissions per Arrest A second point of criminal justice intervention is the sentencing of those who have been arrested, charged, and convicted.
|
From page 51... ...
. State prison commitment rates for burglary and robbery also increased, but these increases were below 100 percent.
|
From page 52... ...
Very long sentences have increased in number since the proliferation of enhancements for those convicted of second and third felonies, the institution of truth-in-sentencing requirements, and other shifts in sentencing policy discussed in greater detail in Chapter 3. BJS's analysis of recent trends in the state prison population reveals the growing population serving life and other long sentences.
|
From page 53... ...
From 1980 to 2010, the state imprisonment rate for six main crime types grew by 222 percent. Setting aside drug-related incarceration, for which offending rates are difficult to define and measure, changes in crime trends or in police effectiveness as measured by arrests per crime contributed virtually nothing to the increase in incarceration rates over the 30-year period.
|
From page 54... ...
This is shown by the fact that in the 1990s, time served replaced imprisonments per arrest as the leading factor in growth in incarceration rates, account ing for 74 percent of the growth for all six crimes and 62 percent when drug crimes are excluded. The final decade, 2000-2010, was a period of
|
From page 55... ...
in the overall incarceration rate in state prisons, and whatever growth occurred is attributable almost entirely to increases in imprisonments per arrest. Trends in the Federal System Growth in the incarceration rate has been larger and more sustained in the federal system than in the states.
|
From page 56... ...
. RACIAL DISPARITY IN IMPRISONMENT The discussion thus far has examined the growth in incarceration rates, linking it to trends in crime, arrests, prison admissions, and time served.
|
From page 57... ...
Trends in black and white imprisonment are shown in Figure 2-11.11 BJS compiled state and federal prison admission rates for blacks and whites separately in a historical series extending from 1926 to 1986 (Langan, 1991b)
|
From page 58... ...
The increase in absolute disparities is especially striking, growing more than 3-fold from 1970 to 1986 for prison admission rates and more than doubling from 1980 to 1990 for imprisonment rates. The large increase in absolute disparities reflects the extraordinarily high rates of incarceration among African Americans that emerged with the overall growth of the incarceration rate.
|
From page 59... ...
In the 1970s, blacks FIGURE 2-12 Average percentage of blacks among total arrests for murder and non-negligent manslaughter, robbery, forcible rape, and aggravated assault, by decade, 1972 to 2011. SOURCE: Uniform Crime Reports race-specific arrest rates, 1972 to 2011.
|
From page 60... ...
In absolute terms, involvement of blacks in violent crime has followed the general pattern; in relative terms, it has fallen substantially more than the overall averages. Yet even though participation of blacks in serious violent crimes has declined significantly, disparities in imprisonment between blacks and whites have not fallen by much; as noted earlier, the incarceration rate for nonHispanic black males remains seven times that of non-Hispanic whites.
|
From page 61... ...
In 1974, only 12 percent of the white state prison population and a negligible proportion of blacks reported being of Hispanic origin. By 2004, 24 percent of the white prison population and around 3 percent of blacks reported being Hispanic.
|
From page 62... ...
These age-specific incarceration rates account usefully for differences in the age distribution among the three race-ethnicity groups, adjusting for the relative youth of the black and Hispanic populations. The series before 1990 are represented by dashed lines indicating estimates based on 1991 surveys of federal prisoners.
|
From page 63... ...
. Rumbaut finds that incarceration rates (and arrest rates)
|
From page 64... ...
Women's incarceration rate had thus risen twice as rapidly as men's in the period of growing incarceration rates. Yet despite the rapid growth in women's incarceration, only 7 percent of all sentenced state and federal prisoners were female by 2011 (Carson and Sabol, 2012, Table 5)
|
From page 65... ...
Extremely high incarceration rates had emerged among prime-age noncollege men by 2010 (see Figure 2-15)
|
From page 66... ...
Thus at the height of the prison boom in 2010, the incarceration rate for all African Americans is estimated to be 1,300 per 100,000. For black men under age 40 who had dropped out of high school, the incarceration rate is estimated to be more than 25 times higher, at 35,000 per 100,000.
|
From page 67... ...
Education, for these cumulative risks, is recorded in three categories: for those who attended at least some college, for high school graduates or GED earners, and for those who did not complete high school. Similar to the increases in incarceration rates, cumulative risks of imprisonment have increased substantially for all men with no college education and to extraordinary absolute levels for men who did not complete high school.
|
From page 68... ...
2. The growth in imprisonment -- most rapid in the 1980s, then slower in the 1990s and 2000s -- is attributable largely to increases in prison admission rates and time served.
|
From page 69... ...
Yet despite the de cline in racial disparity, the black-white ratio of incarceration rates remained very high (greater than 4 to 1)
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.