The Ecology of Race and Punishment across Cities

Abstract

In an era of mass incarceration in the United States, neighborhood context plays a significant role in demographic patterns of imprisonment. This paper examines the preprison neighborhood environment of racial and ethnic groups within the Massachusetts prison admission population. The data include over 12,000 prison records of individuals sentenced to state prison for a criminal offense between 2009 and 2014. Findings indicate significant spatial variation across racial groups: The most disadvantaged preprison neighborhoods exist in small cities outside of Boston. Whites and Hispanics who enter prison from small cities, suburbs, and rural towns in Massachusetts lived in significantly more concentrated disadvantage than their counterparts in Boston. However, black men and women coming from Boston and small cities lived in the greatest concentrated disadvantage among the black admission population. Black‐ and Hispanic‐incarcerated people lived in significantly higher levels of concentrated disadvantage as compared to the average neighborhood of white‐incarcerated people. Results indicate that the prison population is drawn from a diverse set of communities, and suggest that an understanding of the full picture of differences in neighborhood context may play an important role in understanding community‐level conditions of mass incarceration and inform interventions aimed at ameliorating the community‐level impacts of imprisonment.

Punishing Neighborhood “Outsiders”: Neighborhood Punishment Rates and the Spatial Mis(match) Between Defendants’ Residence and Arrest Locations

“…In fact, the coefficient size for these variables was larger than the % outsider arrests variable. These findings not only offer support for hypothesis 2 and partial support for hypothesis 3, but largely comport with previous studies of individual-level (Auerhahn et al, 2017;Cooney & Burt, 2008;Simes, 2020;St. Louis, 2020;Vilcica & Goldkamp, 2015;Wooldredge, 2007;Wooldredge et al, 2016) and neighborhood-level case outcomes (Burch, 2014;Clear, 2008;Omori, 2017;Petersen et al, 2019;Sampson, 2012).…”

“…A vast literature has examined the relationships between neighborhood conditions and crime. These studies find that higher crime rates are associated with concentrated disadvantage, rates of residential segregation, and incarceration rates in communities of color (Clear, 2008; Krivo & Peterson, 1996; Sampson et al, 2018; Sampson & Wilson, 1995; Simes, 2020). Such patterns are related to broader processes of economic disinvestment, social isolation, and other structural disadvantages (Burch, 2014; Krivo et al, 2009; Peterson & Krivo, 2010).…”

“…Much of the research on neighborhoods and criminal justice has focused on individual-level outcomes rather than neighborhood analyses (Auerhahn et al, 2017; Pinchevsky & Steiner, 2016; Simes, 2020; St. Louis, 2020; Vilcica & Goldkamp, 2015; Wooldredge, 2007; Wooldredge et al, 2016; Wooldredge & Thistlethwaite, 2004).…”

“…First, it examines the influence of “outsider” cases on community-level punishment outcomes, introducing a novel concept of neighborhood outsiders. Drawing on the focal concerns and defended neighborhood perspectives, we theorize that court actors rely on neighborhood stereotypes as “perceptual shorthands” when defending neighborhoods by disproportionately enforcing harsher punishment outcomes based on race, class, and where the crime was committed (Simes, 2020; Steffensmeier et al, 1998). Second, this study examines the extent to which economic disadvantage and racial composition shape the geographic distribution of criminal sanctions.…”

“…Given that prior research suggests that these factors are particularly important for shaping front- and back-end criminal justice outcomes (Donnelly & Asiedu, 2020; Kane et al, 2013; Williams & Rosenfeld, 2016; Wooldredge, 2007; Wooldredge et al, 2016; Wooldredge & Thistlethwaite, 2004), we examine how these neighborhood factors influence case outcomes. Finally, we disaggregate punishment outcomes by crime type to better understand why certain offenses may be punished more harshly based on neighborhood context (Auerhahn et al, 2017; Simes, 2020; Steen et al, 2005). Since previous neighborhood-level studies have focused on court outcomes for drug (Omori, 2017) or low-level disorder crimes (Petersen et al, 2019), it is important to examine case outcomes for other crime types like property and violent crimes, in addition to drug crimes, given research highlighting differing journey-to-crime spatial paths by crime type (Ackerman & Rossmo, 2015; Rossmo, 2005; Trinidad et al, 2020).…”