A Generational Shift: Race and the Declining Lifetime Risk of Imprisonment.

Mass incarceration fundamentally altered the life course for a generation of American men, but sustained declines in imprisonment in recent years raise questions about how incarceration is shaping current generations. This study makes three primary contributions to a fuller understanding of the contemporary landscape of incarceration in the United States. First, we assess the scope of decarceration. Between 1999 and 2019, the Black male incarceration rate dropped by 44%, and notable declines in Black male imprisonment were evident in all 50 states. Second, our life table analysis demonstrates marked declines in the lifetime risks of incarceration. For Black men, the lifetime risk of incarceration declined by nearly half from 1999 to 2019. We estimate that less than 1 in 5 Black men born in 2001 will be imprisoned, compared with 1 in 3 for the 1981 birth cohort. Third, decarceration has shifted the institutional experiences of young adulthood. In 2009, young Black men were much more likely to experience imprisonment than college graduation. Ten years later, this trend had reversed, with Black men more likely to graduate college than go to prison. Our results suggest that prison has played a smaller role in the institutional landscape for the most recent generation compared with the generation exposed to the peak of mass incarceration.

The contingent effect of incarceration on state health outcomes.

Introduction: This study examines how growth in the population of former prisoners affects rates of communicable diseases such as tuberculosis, syphilis, chlamydia, and HIV. Methods: We estimate state-level fixed effects count models showing how the former prisoner population affected communicable disease in U.S. states from 1987 to 2010, a period of dramatic growth in incarceration. Results: We find contingent effects, based on how specific diseases are recognized, tested, and treated in prisons. The rate of former prisoners increases diseases that are poorly addressed in the prison health care system (e.g., chlamydia), but decreases diseases that are routinely tested and treated (e.g., tuberculosis). For HIV, the relationship has shifted in response to specific treatment mandates and protocols. Data on prison healthcare spending tracks these contingencies. Discussion: Improving the health of prisoners can improve the health of the communities to which they return. We consider these results in light of the relative quality of detection and treatment available to underserved populations within and outside prisons.

Linkages Between Incarceration and Health.

The dramatic expansion of the US penal system during the past 4 decades has led to an increase in adverse health conditions that affect an unprecedented number of individuals. This article first provides an overview of the literature on the immediate and lasting associations between incarceration and physical health, highlighting the diverse health conditions linked with incarceration, including health functioning, infectious disease, chronic conditions, and mortality. Next, we discuss potential explanations for the associations between incarceration and these health conditions, focusing on stress, contagion, social integration, and reintegration challenges. We then consider how medical and social science research can be combined to advance our understanding of these health conditions and suggest ways to reduce the negative association between incarceration and health, such as by improving prison conditions and medical care both inside prisons and after release.

The Growth, Scope, and Spatial Distribution of People With Felony Records in the United States, 1948-2010.

The steep rise in U.S. criminal punishment in recent decades has spurred scholarship on the collateral consequences of imprisonment for individuals, families, and communities. Several excellent studies have estimated the number of people who have been incarcerated and the collateral consequences they face, but far less is known about the size and scope of the total U.S. population with felony convictions beyond prison walls, including those who serve their sentences on probation or in jail. This article develops state-level estimates based on demographic life tables and extends previous national estimates of the number of people with felony convictions to 2010. We estimate that 3 % of the total U.S. adult population and 15 % of the African American adult male population has ever been to prison; people with felony convictions account for 8 % of all adults and 33 % of the African American adult male population. We discuss the far-reaching consequences of the spatial concentration and immense growth of these groups since 1980.

Incarceration and Health.

The expansion of the penal system has been one of the most dramatic trends in contemporary American society. A wealth of research has examined the impact of incarceration on a range of later life outcomes and has considered how the penal system has emerged as a mechanism of stratification and inequality in the United States. In this article, we review the literature from a comparatively new vein of this research: the impact of incarceration on health outcomes. We first consider the impact of incarceration on a range of individual outcomes, from chronic health conditions to mortality. We then consider outcomes beyond the individual, including the health of family members and community health outcomes. Next, we discuss mechanisms linking incarceration and health outcomes before closing with a consideration of limitations in the field and directions for future research.

The relationship between incarceration and premature adult mortality: gender specific evidence.

We examine the relationship between incarceration and premature mortality for men and women. Analyses using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) reveal strong gender differences. Using two different analytic procedures the results show that women with a history of incarceration are more likely to die than women without such a history, even after controlling for health status and criminal behavior prior to incarceration, the availability of health insurance, and other socio-demographic factors. In contrast, there is no relationship between incarceration and mortality for men after accounting for these factors. The results point to the importance of examining gender differences in the collateral consequences of incarceration. The results also contribute to a rapidly emerging literature linking incarceration to various health hazards. Although men constitute the bulk of inmates, future research should not neglect the special circumstances of female former inmates and their rapidly growing numbers.

Citizenship and Punishment: The Salience of National Membership in U.S. Criminal Courts.

When compared to research on the association between immigration and crime, far less attention has been given to the relationship between immigration, citizenship, and criminal punishment. As such, several fundamental questions about how noncitizens are sanctioned and whether citizenship is a marker of stratification in U.S. courts remain unanswered. Are citizens treated differently than noncitizens-both legal and undocumented-in U.S. federal criminal courts? Is the well-documented Hispanic-white sentencing disparity confounded by citizenship status? Has the association between citizenship and sentencing remained stable over time? And are punishment disparities contingent on the demographic context of the court? Analysis of several years of data from U.S. federal courts indicates that citizenship status is a salient predictor of sentencing outcomes-more powerful than race or ethnicity. Other notable findings include the following: accounting for citizenship substantially attenuates disparities between whites and Hispanics; the citizenship effect on sentencing has grown stronger over time; and the effect is most pronounced in districts with growing noncitizen populations. These findings suggest that as international migration increases, citizenship may be an emerging and powerful axis of sociolegal inequality.

Racial Variation in the Effect of Incarceration on Neighborhood Attainment.

Each year, more than 700,000 convicted offenders are released from prison and reenter neighborhoods across the country. Prior studies have found that minority ex-inmates tend to reside in more disadvantaged neighborhoods than do white ex-inmates. However, because these studies do not control for pre-prison neighborhood conditions, we do not know how much (if any) of this racial variation is due to arrest and incarceration, or if these observed findings simply reflect existing racial residential inequality. Using a nationally representative dataset that tracks individuals over time, we find that only whites live in significantly more disadvantaged neighborhoods after prison than prior to prison. Blacks and Hispanics do not, nor do all groups (whites, blacks, and Hispanics) as a whole live in worse neighborhoods after prison. We attribute this racial variation in the effect of incarceration to the high degree of racial neighborhood inequality in the United States: because white offenders generally come from much better neighborhoods, they have much more to lose from a prison spell. In addition to advancing our understanding of the social consequences of the expansion of the prison population, these findings demonstrate the importance of controlling for preprison characteristics when investigating the effects of incarceration on residential outcomes.

Out and down: incarceration and psychiatric disorders.

Psychiatric disorders are unusually prevalent among current and former inmates, but it is not known what this relationship reflects. A putative causal relationship is contaminated by assorted influences, including childhood disadvantage, the early onset of most disorders, and the criminalization of substance use. Using the National Comorbidity Survey Replication (N = 5692), we examine the relationship between incarceration and psychiatric disorders after statistically adjusting for multidimensional influences. The results indicate that (1) some of the most common disorders found among former inmates emerge in childhood and adolescence and therefore predate incarceration; (2) the relationships between incarceration and disorders are smaller for current disorders than lifetime disorders, suggesting that the relationship between incarceration and disorders dissipates over time; and (3) early substance disorders anticipate later incarceration and other psychiatric disorders simultaneously, indicating selection. Yet the results also reveal robust and long-lasting relationships between incarceration and certain disorders, which are not inconsequential for being particular. Specifically, incarceration is related to subsequent mood disorders, related to feeling "down," including major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, and dysthymia. These disorders, in turn, are strongly related to disability, more strongly than substance abuse disorders and impulse control disorders. Although often neglected as a health consequence of incarceration, mood disorders might explain some of the additional disability former inmates experience following release, elevating their relevance for those interested in prisoner reintegration.

When is violence planned?

We examine what types of violent offenses tend to be planned using self-report data from a nationally representative sample of state and federal inmates. We find mixed support for the idea that predatory offenses are more likely to be planned than dispute-related offenses. As expected, robbery offenders are much more likely to report that they planned their crime ahead of time than homicide and physical assault offenders. However, sexual assault offenders are no more likely to report planning than homicide offenders. We also find mixed support for the idea that domestic violence-the supposed crime of passion-is less likely to be planned than violent offenses involving strangers. Finally, we find substantial demographic variation depending on type of crime. Robberies involving offenders of lower socioeconomic status and homicides and assaults involving African American offenders and victims are less likely to involve planning.

Settling down and aging out: toward an interactionist theory of desistance and the transition to adulthood.

Conceptions of adulthood have changed dramatically in recent decades. Despite such changes, however, the notion that young people will eventually "settle down" and desist from delinquent behaviors is remarkably persistent. This article unites criminology with classic work on age norms and role behavior to contend that people who persist in delinquency will be less likely to make timely adult transitions. The empirical analysis supports this proposition, with both arrest and self-reported crime blocking the passage to adult status. The authors conclude that desisting from delinquency is an important part of the package of role behaviors that define adulthood.

Incarceration as exposure: the prison, infectious disease, and other stress-related illnesses.

This article examines the relationship between incarceration and health functioning. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, the relationship between incarceration and more than 20 different measures of health are tested. Using multiple analytic procedures, a distinctive pattern of association emerges. Individuals with a history of incarceration appear consistently more likely to be afflicted with infectious disease and other illnesses associated with stress. In contrast, no consistent relationships were observed between incarceration status and ailments unrelated to stress or infectious disease. The results suggest that exposure to infectious disease and stress are important to understanding the lasting impact of incarceration on health.

Re-Assessing the Relationship between High School Sports Participation and Deviance: Evidence of Enduring, Bifurcated Effects.

Despite its longstanding popular appeal, the idea that athletic activity is a deterrent to crime and delinquency suffers from a distinct lack of empirical support. This paper tests the hypotheses that the relationship between high school sports participation and deviance varies by both type of deviant behavior and level of athletic involvement. The analysis is based upon longitudinal data focusing on the effects of involvement in high school sports, the country's largest institutional setting for youth sports participation, in early adulthood. We find that the relationship between athletic involvement and deviance varies significantly depending upon the deviant behaviors examined. Specifically, we find that shop-lifting decreases with sports participation, while drunken driving increases. Moreover, these effects extend further into the life course (age 30) than has been demonstrated in any previous study and hold across all our measures of sports participation. Several potential explanatory mechanisms are evaluated. The implications of these enduring, bifurcated effects are discussed.

SUBJECTIVE DESISTANCE AND THE TRANSITION TO ADULTHOOD.

This paper introduces two new conceptualizations of desistance based on individuals' personal assessments of their own movement away from crime. Drawing from qualitative accounts of changes in offending, we develop survey items indexing subjective desistance and reference group desistance. We then use a representative community sample of young adults to compare these new conceptualizations of desistance against more established measures derived from changes in arrest and self-reported crime. The results indicate that the prevalence and the predictors of desistance vary with these alternative conceptualizations. While relationship quality is consistently related to each desistance measure, the effects of prior crime, peer relationships, race, gender, and parental status depend upon the outcome under consideration. These results show both the generality of the desistance process and the utility of comparing subjective accounts of this process alongside official and self-reported behavioral measures.