IPR Policy Briefing Explores Mass Incarceration in the U.S.

Fall 2004, Volume 26, Number 2

From left: Fay Lomax Cook, Mary Pattillo, Devah Pager, Kathryn Edin, and Jeff Manza

In a June 7 policy briefing, four IPR faculty fellows presented their latest research findings about the destabilizing effects of prisoner re-entry to a crowd of more than 85 policymakers, community activists, foundation representatives, and journalists. They pointed to evidence showing that since 1972, the U.S. prison population has skyrocketed. More than two million Americans are behind bars, a 500 percent increase over three decades ago.

Of those currently in prison, 95 percent will eventually be released into American communities, with more than half a million being released this year alone. Currently, one out of every three African American males will spend some part of his life in prison, and this figure jumps to two out of three for black males without a high school diploma.

“Ex-inmates with few social supports, family attachments, or economic opportunities, might ultimately increase crime rates,” said moderator Mary Pattillo. So the way in which American society currently handles the prison boom, through an expanding penal system, may actually be a “self-defeating strategy for crime control,” she remarked.

Race, records, and employment

To demonstrate the effects of race and criminal record on hiring outcomes, Devah Pager talked about her experimental study of employment discrimination. In it, Pager sent matched pairs of young black and white men to apply for 350 entry-level job openings throughout Milwaukee.

One of Pager’s most striking findings was that employers were more likely to call back whites with criminal records for interviews (17 percent) over black applicants with no criminal history (14 percent). Blacks with a criminal history had the lowest call-back rate (5 percent). The disproportionate number of African Americans being sent to prison and media portrayals of violent offenders (most of those in prison were convicted of drug or nonviolent crimes) have reinforced a general association between race and crime in people’s minds.

Lisa Hampton of the Chicago Jobs Council asks the panelists for recommendations.

“The results suggest that being black is essentially equivalent to having a felony conviction in the eyes of these employers,” she said. She applauded Illinois’ efforts to pass legislation sealing nonviolent criminal records. Work is a great rehabilitator, she pointed out, and without it exfelons easily fall back into criminal activity.

Children of incarcerated parents

More than 1.5 million American children currently have a parent in the criminal justice system, usually their father, said Kathryn Edin. Though many Americans might assume that these fathers do not want to care for their children, she pointed to the contrary. At the time of the child’s birth, half of these men are living with the mother of their child, three in four intend to marry her, and eight in ten plan to care for and support their child. But by the time their child is in preschool, few of them will have made good on these intentions. In part, this is because of the many strikes—children from previous marriages and criminal records—these fathers have against them. “Their saga is one of extraordinarily high hopes, of good intentions, but of astonishingly little fulfillment,” Edin said.

Felon disenfranchisement

In addition to detaching criminals from the world of work and their families, jail time also strips many of basic civil liberties once they have served their time such as the right to hold office, serve on a jury, and vote, said Jeff Manza. States regulate these rights, so voting regimes for ex-felons vary across the nation from very liberal, allowing all felons to vote (Maine and Vermont), to very strict, disenfranchising current inmates and some or all ex-felons (such as Alabama, Florida, and Nevada). “The U.S. stands alone in restricting the right to vote of individuals who are not in prison,” he noted.

These restrictions exist despite public opinion data showing that a majority of Americans favor giving ex-felons the right to vote, no matter how heinous the crime. In 2000, more than 4.7 million felons—or 2.3 percent of the voting population—were disenfranchised. Had ex-felons in Florida been allowed to vote, for example, Al Gore would have easily carried Florida, Manza said.

In describing these varied social effects of mass incarceration, the professors touched on mandatory sentencing policies and the war on drugs that have conferred on the U.S. its unique position as the world’s biggest jailer.

Said Pattillo, “To move beyond thinking of incarceration as merely punishment and to place it instead within a larger system of social stratification and institutional relations, we need to examine the consequences of incarceration. Prisoners and ex-prisoners must be recognized as fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, spouses, neighborhood residents, and citizens as we have done here today.”

June 7 policy briefing panelists

Mary Pattillo is an IPR faculty fellow and associate professor of sociology and African American studies. She is also co-editor of Imprisoning America: The Social Effects of Mass Incarceration (Russell Sage Foundation Press, 2004), which resulted from an IPR conference on the effects of incarceration on children and families. See page 12 for book details.

Jeff Manza is IPR’s associate director and a faculty fellow and associate professor of sociology. He is working on a book, Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

Devah Pager, IPR faculty fellow and assistant professor of sociology until August 2004 and now assistant professor of sociology at Princeton University, published the results of her study in the American Journal of Sociology, 2003, 108(5): 937-975. She is currently writing The Mark of a Criminal Record (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming).

Kathryn Edin, IPR faculty fellow and associate professor of sociology until August 2004 and now associate professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, is co-author of Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage (University of California Press, forthcoming).