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This paper examines sources for the changing commitment rates to U.S. state prisons (PCR) from 1933 to 1985 using a variety of time-series techniques. Theoretically, it resolves ambiguous interpretations of how crime, unemployment, and imprisonment are related. Hypotheses that crime and punishment are in equilibrium are rejected. Our final specification supports theories integrating institutionally endogenous and socially exogenous causes of prison use and includes feedback effects between crime and punishment. We reached several general conclusions. (1) Changes in PCR are due partly to changes in the levels of unemployment, age composition of the population, and military active-duty rates. (2) Effects of the criminal justice system, captured as autoregressive institutional drift, account for approximately half of the year-to-year fluctuations in the PCR. The contemporaneous prison discharge rate also influences the rate of prison commitments. (3) Neither the specified nor the unspecified institutional effects mediate the effects of other exogenous variables. (4) Under most simultaneousequation specifications, the crime rate is moderately influenced by the contemporaneous unemployment rate and strongly influenced by prior levels of prison commitments. The preferred simultaneous causal model estimates a modest positive coefficient for the unemployment-crime causal path and a substantial positive coefficient for the unemployment-prison commitment causal path.
Two decades have passed since the Great Society programs ostensibly widened the doors of opportunity in the United States, including the opportunity to practice law. This article examines the current status of the black bar and evaluates several contemporary theories of professional labor market segmentation. Findings show that the absolute number of black attorneys has increased over the past 15 years, the rate of growth is slowing, the proportion of blacks enrolled in law school has been relatively stable over this period, and that other minorities and women have increased their presence within the bar more than blacks. The evidence establishes the importance of the public sector as a source of employment for black and other minority lawyers. A comparison of the proportions of black lawyers and judges found within several large cities reveals the influence of the black electorate on the racial composition of the bar. The practice of law has generally been opened to blacks, but their distribution across specialties and settings suggests that they may be particularly vulnerable to policies that reduce the size and scope of the public sector.
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