The Politics of Punishment
Evaluating Political Explanations of Incarceration Rates
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6384331 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Katherine B Smith (0000-0003-0312-2284, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, corresponding author), Kevin B Smith (0000-0003-0424-9367) |
| Year | 2004 |
| Volume | 66 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 925-938 |
| Publication date | 2004-08-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Journal of Politics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-3816 • E-ISSN: 1468-2508 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1468-2508.2004.00283.x |
| OpenAlex | W2117912394 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 81 |
| References cited | 26 |
Why have incarceration rates dramatically increased even as crime rates have remained stable or even declined? This is a question of considerable policy and theoretical relevance that currently has no satisfactory answer. I attempt to address this question by examining the key political explanations of prison populations and the unit of analysis and data limitation obstacles that make it difficult to conduct a comprehensive empirical analysis of these frameworks. I address these issues and undertake such an analysis using a pooled state-level analysis covering the years 1980–1995. Results suggest that the growth in prison populations has little to do with changes in crime rates or government response to citizen attitudes. Instead it is the most basic elements of the political environment (partisanship and elections) and the continuing legacy of racial social cleavages that explain why incarceration rates have increased
Criminology · Government (linguistics · Political science · Politics · Prison · Punishment (psychology · Relevance (law · Sociology · State (computer science · Advanced Causal Inference Techniques · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Homelessness and Social Issues · Law · Psychology · Social Psychology
The Adoption of Prepaid Tuition and Savings Plans in the American States
Serving the Public Good?—A Corpus-Assisted Discourse Analysis of Private Prisons and For-Profit Incarceration in the United States
Restorative Alternatives
Race, Politics, and Public Safety
Ending Mass Incarceration
Justice in America
The Growth of Incarceration in the United States
Living While Black
The Politics of Inclusion
Placial Justice
Public Opinion and Criminal Justice Policy
Parole Release and Supervision
Does Locked Up Mean Locked Out? The Effects of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 on Black Male Students’ College Enrollment
National internal security policies across Europe – a comparative analysis applying big data clustering techniques
Judicial Selection and Criminal Punishment
Understanding Judicial Power
Breaks and Convergence in U.S. Regional Crime Rates
Trying to get it right
Reconsidering State Variation in Incarceration Rates
The Origins of Mass Incarceration
Crime, cash, and limited options
Public Opinion and the Politics of Criminal Justice Policy Making
Modern time‐series methods and the dynamics of prison populations
The Effect of County-Level Prison Population Growth on Crime Rates
The Punitive Public? Exploring the Opinion-Election Connection in Criminal Justice Policy
A Comparison of Three Approaches to Handling Incomplete State-Level Data
Crime, punishment and segregation in the United States
The dog that did not bark
Mapping the shadow carceral state
Critical Junctures and Conditions of Change
The Role of Hospitable and Inhospitable States in the Process of Refugee Resettlement in the United States
The Place of Punishment in Twenty-First-Century America
Class, Race and Hyperincarceration in Revanchist America
Criminal Justice Policy in France
The electoral connection, state attorneys general, and the dynamics of incarceration rates
Sentencing disparities for juvenile offenders sentenced to adult prisons
Crime across the States
Collateral Consequences in the A merican States
Policing Urban America
Is All Punishment Local? The Effects of Jurisdictional Context on Sentence Length
Business Interest Group Power and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families
Ideology, Diversity, and Imprisonment
Coming Together to Punish Others
The Use of Incarceration in Canada
Determinants of Racial Disparities in Female Incarceration Rates, 2000–2018
Exploring the Contextual Determinants of Individual Attitudes toward Immigrants and Criminal Activity and their Spillover Policy Implications
How do people react to policy reform? Group cues and persuasion in criminal justice
Privatizing Punishment
Historical Contingencies and the Evolving Importance of Race, Violent Crime, and Region in Explaining Mass Incarceration in the United States
Testing the Impact of Racial Attitudes and Racial Diversity on Prisoner Reentry Policies in the U.S. States
Macro Implementation
Race, Representation, and Revenue
Politics and State Punitiveness in Black and White
The Measurement and Stability of State Citizen Ideology
Social Capital, Racial Context, and Incarcerations in the American States
Rapid Diffusion and Policy Reform
Who Punishes More? Partisanship, Punitive Policies, and the Puzzle of Democratic Governors
Dynamic Representation(s)
Moral Panics and Punctuated Equilibrium in Public Policy
The Determinants of Policy Introduction and Bill Adoption
Colorblind” Policy in Black and White
Why Do States Privatize their Prisons? The Unintended Consequences of Inmate Litigation
The Civic Voluntarism of “Custodial Citizens
Perverse Politics
Race and Punishment in American Prisons
Persuasion and Resistance
The Public's Increasing Punitiveness and Its Influence on Mass Incarceration in the United States
Deviants” and Democracy
Testing Judicial Power
Random Activities Theory
The political landscape of death
Inequality and Punishment
A Quantitative Analysis of Legislation with Harsher Punishment in Japan
Jailing Immigrant Detainees
The Penology of Racial Innocence
Heterogeneous and racialized impacts of state incarceration policies on birth outcomes in the United States
The War on Drugs, Racial Meanings, and Structural Racism
Race, Inequality, and the Prioritization of Corrections Spending in the American States
Proliferation of Punishment
Beyond the Federal Drug War
Immigrant Threat or Institutional Context? Examining Police Agency and County Context and the Implementation of the 287(g) Program
Pooled Time Series Analysis
Punishment and Social Structure
Making Crime Pay
Punishment and Modern Society
Policing the Ghetto Underclass
The Impact of `Three Strikes and You're Out
Sociological Perspectives on Punishment
Southern Politics in State and Nation
State Prison Populations and Their Growth, 1971–1991
Determinate Sentencing and Abolishing Parole
Whose Variance Is It Anyway? Interpreting Empirical Models with State-Level Data
The Measurement of the Partisan Balance of State Government
Crime and Punishment
Measuring Citizen and Government Ideology in the American States, 1960-93
Modeling Federal Implementation as a System
Budgets, Institutions, and Change
What To Do (and Not to Do) with Time-Series Cross-Section Data
The Politics of Punishment across Time and Space
Imprisonment and Social Classification in Five Common-Law Democracies, 1955-1985
Toward a Political Model of Incarceration
Toward a Political Sociology of Punishment
| Unique citing works | 81 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 3,86 |
| Citation span | 2005 - 2026 (22) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 81 |