The ecology of race and punishment across cities

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.Accepted manuscrip

Place after prison: neighborhood attachment and attainment during reentry

Over 600,000 people leave prison and become residents of neighborhoods across the United States annually. Using a longitudinal survey of people returning to Greater Boston, this study examines disparities in neighborhood attainment after prison. Accounting for levels of pre-prison neighborhood disadvantage, Black and Hispanic respondents moved into significantly more disadvantaged areas than whites. Forty percent of respondents initially moved to only one of two Boston community areas. Housing is an important neighborhood sorting mechanism: living in concentrated disadvantage was more likely for those residing in household arrangements with family or friends, or in emergency or transitional housing. Significantly, neighborhood residence was not attained by all: a quarter of respondents left prison and entered formal institutional settings or lived in extreme social marginality throughout Boston. Housing insecurity, re-incarceration, and profound racial disparities in neighborhood context explain the ecological structure of social inequality in urban neighborhoods in an era of mass incarceration.Accepted manuscrip

Solitary confinement and the U.S. prison boom

Solitary confinement is a harsh form custody involving isolation from the general prison population and highly restricted access to visitation and programs. Using detailed prison records covering 30 years of practices in Kansas (1985–2014), we find solitary confinement is a normal event during imprisonment: 38 percent of whites and 46 percent of blacks experienced solitary confinement during their prison term. Long stays in solitary confinement were rare in the late 1980s with no detectable racial disparities, but a sharp increase in capacity after a new prison opening began an era of long-term isolation that most heavily impacted black young adults. A decomposition analysis indicates the increase in the length of stay in solitary confinement almost entirely explains the growth in the proportion of people held in solitary confinement. Our results provide new evidence of increasingly punitive prison conditions and previously unmeasured forms of inequality during the prison boom.Accepted manuscrip

Drug use in the year after prison

With poor health and widespread drug problems in the U.S. prison population, post-prison drug use provides an important measure of both public health and social integration following incarceration. We study the correlates of drug use with data from the Boston Reentry Study (BRS), a survey of men and women interviewed four times over the year after prison release. The BRS data allow an analysis of legal and illegal drug use, and the correlation between them. We find that illegal drug use is associated with histories of drug problems and childhood trauma. Use of medications is associated with poor physical health and a history of mental illness. Legal and illegal drug use are not strongly correlated. Results suggest that in a Medicaid expansion state where health coverage is widely provided to people leaving prison, formerly-incarcerated men and women use medications, not illegal drugs, to address their health needs.Accepted manuscrip

Out-of-control criminal justice: the systems improvement solution for more safety, justice, accountability, and efficiency

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Place and punishment: the spatial context of incarceration

OBJECTIVES: Research on race and urban poverty views incarceration as a new and important aspect of social disadvantage in inner-city neighborhoods. However, in quantitative studies of the spatial distribution of imprisonment across neighborhoods, the pattern outside urban areas has not been examined. This paper offers a unique analysis of disaggregated prison admissions and investigates the spatial concentrations and levels of admissions for the entire state of Massachusetts. METHODS: Spatial regressions estimate census tract-level prison admission rates in relation to racial demographics, social and economic disadvantage, arrest rates, and violent crime; an analysis of outlier neighborhoods examines the surprisingly high admission rates in small cities. FINDINGS: Regression analysis yields three findings. First, incarceration is highly spatially concentrated: census tracts covering 15% of the state’s population account for half of all prison admissions. Second, across urban and non-urban areas, incarceration is strongly related to concentrated disadvantage and the share of the black population, even after controlling for arrest and crime rates. Third, the analysis shows admission rates in small urban satellite cities and suburbs comprise the highest rates in the sample and far exceed model predictions. CONCLUSION: Mass incarceration emerged not just to manage distinctively urban social problems but was characteristic of a broader mode of governance evident in communities often far-removed from deep inner-city poverty. These notably high levels and concentrations in small cities should be accounted for when developing theories of concentrated disadvantage or policies designed to ameliorate the impacts of mass incarceration on communities.Accepted manuscrip

Prenatal healthcare after sentencing reform: heterogeneous effects for prenatal healthcare access and equity

BACKGROUND: High rates of imprisonment in the U.S. have significant health, social, and economic consequences, particularly for marginalized communities. This study examines imprisonment as a contextual driver of receiving prenatal care by evaluating whether early and adequate prenatal care improved after Pennsylvania’s criminal sentencing reform reduced prison admissions. METHODS: We linked individual-level birth certificate microdata on births (n = 999,503) in Pennsylvania (2009–2015), to monthly county-level rates of prison admissions. We apply an interrupted time series approach that contrasts post-policy changes in early and adequate prenatal care across counties where prison admissions were effectively reduced or continued to rise. We then tested whether prenatal care improvements were stronger among Black birthing people and those with lower levels of educational attainment. RESULTS: In counties where prison admissions declined the most after the policy, early prenatal care increased from 69.0% to 73.2%, and inadequate prenatal care decreased from 18.1% to 15.9%. By comparison, improvements in early prenatal care were smaller in counties where prison admissions increased the most post-policy (73.5 to 76.4%) and there was no change to prenatal care inadequacy (14.4% pre and post). We find this pattern of improvements to be particularly strong among Black birthing people and those with lower levels of educational attainment. CONCLUSIONS: Pennsylvania’s sentencing reforms were associated with small advancements in racial and socioeconomic equity in prenatal care.1(PG012452-02) - Trustees Of Columbia University In The City Of New York; Trustees Of Columbia University In The City Of New YorkPublished versio

The population prevalence of solitary confinement

Solitary confinement is a severe form of incarceration closely associated with long-lasting psychological harm and poor post-release outcomes. Estimating the population prevalence, we find that 11% of all black men in Pennsylvania, born 1986 to 1989, were incarcerated in solitary confinement by age 32. Reflecting large racial disparities, the population prevalence is only 3.4% for Latinos and 1.4% for white men. About 9% of black men in the state cohort were held in solitary for more than 15 consecutive days, violating the United Nations standards for minimum treatment of incarcerated people. Nearly 1 in 100 black men experienced solitary for a year or longer by age 32. Racial disparities are similar for women, but rates are lower. A decomposition shows that black men’s high risk of solitary confinement stems primarily from their high imprisonment rate. Findings suggest that harsh conditions of U.S. incarceration have population-level effects on black men’s well-being.Published versio