W w w. H a m I l t o n p r o j e c t. O r g acknowledgements
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- Incarceration rate per 100,000 of national population
- Cumula tiv e risk of imprisonmen t (per cen t) Birth cohort
10 Ten Economic Facts about Crime and Incarceration in the United States Indeed, mass incarceration appears to be a relatively unique and recent American phenomenon. A variety of factors can explain the discrepancy in incarceration rates. One important factor is higher crime rates, especially rates of violent crimes: the homicide rate in the United States is approximately four times the typical rate among the nations in figure 6 (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 2014). Additionally, drug control policies in the United States—which have largely not been replicated in other Western countries—have prominently contributed to the rising incarcerated population over the past several decades (Donahue, Ewing, and Peloquin 2011). Another important factor is sentencing policy; in particular, the United States imposes much longer prison sentences for drug-related offenses than do many economically similar nations. For example, the average expected time served for drug offenses is twenty-three months in the United States, in contrast to twelve months in England and Wales and seven months in France (Lynch and Pridemore 2011). The U.S. incarceration rate is more than six times that of the typical OECD nation. 6. The United States is an international outlier when it comes to incarceration rates. In 2012, the incarceration rate in the United States—which includes inmates in the custody of local jails, state or federal prisons, and privately operated facilities—was 710 per 100,000 U.S. residents (Glaze and Herberman 2013). This puts the U.S. incarceration rate at more than five times the typical global rate of 130, and more than twice the incarceration rate of 90 percent of the world’s countries (Walmsley 2013). The U.S. incarceration rate in 2012 was significantly higher than those of its neighbors: Canada’s and Mexico’s incarceration rates were 118 and 210, respectively. Moreover, the U.S. incarceration rate is more than six times higher than the typical rate of 115 for a nation in the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) (Walmsley 2013). As seen in figure 6, in recent years incarceration rates in OECD nations have ranged from 47 to 266; these rates are relatively comparable to the rates seen in the United States prior to the 1980s.
FIGURE 6. Incarceration Rates in OECD Countries With an incarceration rate of 710 inmates per 100,000 residents, the United States stands in stark contrast to the typical incarceration rate of 115 among OECD nations. Sources: Glaze and Herberman 2013; Walmsley 2013; authors’ calculations. Note: All incarceration rates are from 2013, with the exception of the rates for Canada, Greece, Israel, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States; of these countries, all rates are from 2012, with the exception of Canada, whose rate is from 2011–12. The incarceration rate for the United Kingdom is a weighted average of England and Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. For more details, see the technical appendix. 0 100
200 300
400 500
600 700
800 United States Chile Estonia
Israel Poland
Mexico New Zealand Slovakia Hungary
Turkey Czech Republic Spain United Kingdom Portugal Australia Luxembourg Canada
Greece Belgium
Italy South Korea France Austria
Ireland Switzerland Netherlands Germany
Denmark Norway
Sweden Slovenia
Finland Japan
Iceland 710
266 238
223 217
210 192
187 186
179 154
147 147
136 130
122 118
111 108
106 99 98 98 88 82 82 79 73 72 67 66 58 51 47 Incarceration rate per 100,000 of national population The Hamilton Project • Brookings 11 discrepancies between races became more apparent. Men born in the latest birth cohort, 1975–79, reached their mid-thirties around 2010; for this cohort, the difference in cumulative risk of imprisonment between white and African American men is more than double the difference for the first birth cohort (as seen on the far right of figure 7). These racial disparities become particularly striking when considering men with low educational attainment. Over 53 percentage points distance white and African American male high school dropouts in the latest birth cohort (depicted by the difference between the two dashed lines on the far right of figure 7), with male African American high school dropouts facing a nearly 70 percent cumulative risk of imprisonment. This high risk of imprisonment translates into a higher chance of being in prison than of being employed. For African American men in general, it translates into a higher chance of spending time in prison than of graduating with a four-year college degree (Pettit 2012; Pettit and Western 2004). For certain demographic groups, incarceration has become a fact of life. Figure 7 illustrates the cumulative risk of imprisonment for men by race, education, and birth cohort. As described by Pettit and Western (2004), the cumulative risk of imprisonment is the projected lifetime likelihood of serving time for a person born in a specific year. Specifically, each point reflects the percent chance that a man born within a given range of years will have spent time in prison by age thirty to thirty-four. Notably, most men who are ever incarcerated enter prison for the first time before age thirty-five, and so these cumulative risks by age thirty to thirty-four are reflective of lifetime risks. Men in the first birth cohort, 1945–49, reached their mid-thirties by 1980 just as the incarceration rate began a steady incline. For all education levels within this age group, only an 8-percentage point differential separated white and African American men in terms of imprisonment risk (depicted by the difference between the two solid lines on the far left of figure 7). As the incarceration rate rose, however,
FIGURE 7. Cumulative Risk of Imprisonment by Age 30–34 for Men Born Between 1945–49 and 1975–79, by Race and Education Among men born between 1975 and 1979, an African American high school dropout has nearly a 70 percent chance of being imprisoned by his mid-thirties. Source: Western and Wildeman 2009. Note: Cumulative risk of imprisonment is the projected lifetime likelihood of imprisonment for a person born in a specific range of years. For more details, see the technical appendix. There is nearly a 70 percent chance that an African American man without a high school diploma will be imprisoned by his mid-thirties. 7. Born
1945–49 Born
1950–54 Born
1955–59 Born
1960–64 Born
1965–69 Born
1970–74 Born
1975–79 Cumula tiv e risk of imprisonmen t (per cen t) Birth cohort 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 White, male high school dropouts African American, male high school dropouts White males, all education levels African American males, all education levels Yüklə 237,08 Kb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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