The Direct and Indirect Effects of Socio-Economic Variables on State Imprisonment Rates

Abstract

Almost two decades of research on the exact relationship between socio-economic variables and the rate of incarceration has produced highly divergent results. Some of these inconsistencies may be due to the various models specified (some use total crime rather than violent, and some control for system level variables while others do not). Virtually all of the previous research has focused on the direct effect only. Utilizing 1990 cross-sectional state level data this study examines the direct and indirect effects of socio-economic variables on imprisonment rates while controlling for arrests or crimes rates and system level variables (e.g., prison admissions and releases). Models using arrest rate data rather than crime rates were included to capture the effect of the recent "war on drugs" on imprisonment which is not included in the Index Crime rate data. These data reveal that percent nonwhite has a significant and direct effect on imprisonment levels across the U.S., but less of a direct effect in nonsouthern states. The data also document that percent nonwhite has a substantial indirect effect. The indirect effect of economic inequality is greater than the direct effect. Finally, there was no variation in the effects of extra-legal variables between those models which controlled for system level data and those which did not.

Social context of crime control: a time-series analysis of the Korean case, 1973–2002

“…While earlier studies of conventional conflict theorists provide deterministic predictions of a direct link between economic conditions and crime control, more recent studies have concentrated their focus on the mediating process that links the economy to crime control [1,5,16,28,37,45,69]. Unlike general predictions from the conflict perspective, economic deprivation may be associated with crime control only under certain circumstances.…”

“…Moral panic justifies coercive crime control and helps produce more arrests, prosecutions, convictions, and incarcerations [24,41,57]. Unless the process through which economic conditions are 1 Chiricos [15, p.195] explains that a possibility for these discrepancies may be less aggregation bias at the lower levels of aggregation because national level data may cancel out substantial sources of regional variations necessary to assess the relationship. The linkage between economic condition and crime control also varied with the type of crimes.…”

Reconsidering State Variation in Incarceration Rates

“…Predictably, the poverty rate of a region is positively correlated with the region's incarceration rate (Sorensen and Stemen 2002). Poverty stands out as one of the strongest determinants of the incarceration rate, having a demonstrably bigger impact on incarceration rate than sentencing policies; conversely, a higher employment rate drives the incarceration rate of a state down (Arvanites and Asher 1995; Sorensen and Stemen 2002). Some have found inconsistent relationships between poverty and incarceration, lending credence to the idea that the linkage of poverty and incarceration may break down at a more granular level (Jacobs and Carmichael 2001).…”

Punishment and Economic Inequality: Estimating Short-Term and Long-Term Equilibrium Relationships

“…The majority of prior research used cross-sectional analysis to examine spatial variation across states and nations. Cross-sectional analyses of U.S. data produce insignificant results (Bailey, 1981;Jacobs, 1978;McGarrell, 1993) or few significant results among various model specifications (Arvanites & Asher, 1995, 1998. In the studies using cross-national data, none of the significant results are found (Bridges, Crutchfield, & Simpson, 1987;Greenberg, 1999;Killias, 1986;Neapolitan, 2001;Ruddell, 2005).…”