John M Eason
Biographic Data
| ID | 163582 |
|---|---|
| NAME | John M Eason |
| GIVEN NAMES | John M |
| FAMILY NAME | Eason |
| SIGNATURE | EASON J M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Wisconsin–Madison |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2241-121X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 130 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Advancing Ethnography and Mechanisms of Misinheritance During the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration
Crime, Violence, and Criminal Justice in Rural America: Toward a Rural Neighborhood Effect
We review the current scholarship on rural policing, punishment, crime, and reentry. We shift the focus from the “square of crime” to an expansive understanding of crime and punishment in rural communities that uses neighborhood effects to study inequality across places. A central focus of the article is an investigation of the prison boom or the tripling of prison facilities in the United States. Ultimately, the prison boom is largely a rural ph…
Punishment is purple: The political economy of prison building
The United States is unique among rich countries in the world in its level of contemporary mass incarceration, a massive social change that has reshaped the nature of inequality and social mobility. We have more than tripled the number of prison facilities since 1970. Despite employing nearly 450,000 corrections officers, occupying a land mass of roughly 600 square miles, and costing conservatively $30 billion to build, this massive public works …
Assessing the Impact of Cannabis Decriminalization on Racial Disparities in Chicago's Cannabis Possession Arrests
Black and Hispanic neighborhoods have suffered the most severe consequences of the "war on drugs." As the war on drugs waned, cannabis legalization/decriminalization efforts increased across America. A prime example of decriminalization occurred in August of 2012 as the City of Chicago introduced a new law providing officers with option to ticket, rather than arrest, individuals caught in possession of 15 grams of cannabis or less. As cannabis po…
The impact of carceral churn and healthcare organizations on HIV/Aids incidence in Arkansas
Penal and healthcare institutions generate and mitigate community-level health inequality, respectively.•Arkansas Counties with high prison churn and disadvantage have higher rates of HIV/AIDS.•Hospital density moderates effect of prison churn on incidence of HIV/AIDS
The Prison Bust: Declining carceral capacity in an era of mass incarceration
While there is a growing literature investigating the causes and consequences of the US prison boom—the tripling of prison facilities between 1970 and 2000—much less is known about current patterns of prison closures. We use novel data capturing the universe of prison closures (N = 188) from 2000 to 2022 to identify and characterize what we term “the prison bust”—the period since 2000 when prison closures began to climb and eventually eclipse new…
Policing, Punishment, and Place: Spatial-Contextual Analyses of the Criminal Legal System
Policing and punishment are unevenly distributed across geographic space. Research analyzing place-based variation in the criminal legal system is increasing, asking how community conditions contribute to variation in criminal justice outcomes and how multiple criminal justice exposures (e.g., policing and punishment) vary together in places. In this article, we identify spatial-contextual analyses of the criminal legal system and summarize their…
A study of Sars-COV-2 outbreaks in US federal prisons: The linkage between staff, incarcerated populations, and community transmission
We found significant evidence of community/staff/incarcerated population inter-linkage of SARS-COV-2 transmission. Further study is warranted to determine which control measures aimed at the incarcerated population and/or staff are most efficacious at preventing or controlling outbreaks
Changing Prisons to Help People Change
It is important to consider the conditions of prison life in understanding how individuals rejoin society at the conclusion of their sentence. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is an evidence-based approach that promotes new ways of thinking and behaving for both incarcerated persons and correctional staff that will better prepare returning citizens to be valuable community members. We consider that “since criminal behavior is driven partly by c…
The 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic and Its Corresponding Data Boon: Issues With Pandemic-Related Data From Criminal Justice Organizations
Public organizations, including institutions in the U.S. criminal justice (CJ) system, have been rapidly releasing information pertaining to COVID-19. Even CJ institutions typically reticent to share information, like private prisons, have released vital COVID-19 information. The boon of available pandemic-related data, however, is not without problems. Unclear conceptualizations, stakeholders’ influence on data collection and release, and a lack…
Is There a Temporal Relationship between Covid-19 Infections among Prison Staff, Incarcerated Persons and the Larger Community in the United States
The relationship between COVID-19 infections among staff and incarcerated persons shows that staff is vital to infection control, and correctional administrators should also focus infection containment efforts on staff, in addition to incarcerated persons
Incarcerated During a Pandemic: Implications of Covid-19 for Jailed Individuals and Their Families
U.S. jails are typically over-crowded settings and have faced notable social distancing challenges and a lack of personal protective equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, institutions made swift policy changes that included canceling in-person visits, suspending programming, and releasing a proportion of people with low-level charges. That said, a still-significant number of individuals remained incarcerated for whom the consequenc…
Geodemographic insights on the Covid-19 pandemic in the State of Wisconsin and the role of risky facilities
School Punishment and Education: Racial/Ethnic Disparities With Grade Retention and the Role of Urbanicity
There are racial/ethnic disparities associated with school punishment practices and academic progress. In addition, research suggests that urban schools have stricter school punishment practices and higher grade retention rates. What remains unknown, however, is the relationship between race/ethnicity, school punishment practices, and retention rates across urban, rural, and suburban schools. Thus, this study draws from the Texas Education Agency…
Pushing them to the edge: Suicide in immigrant detention centers as a product of organizational failure
Too Strict or Too Lenient: Examining The Role of School Strictness With Educational and Juvenile Justice Outcomes
Although there is research exploring how school punishment practices are influencing academic and juvenile justice outcomes, how strict or lenient school punishment practices are related to aspects of education such as grade retention and dropping out, as well as juvenile justice contact, remains unknown. This study draws from the Texas Education Agency’s Public Education Information Management System to investigate the relationship between stric…
School Strictness and Education: Investigating Racial and Ethnic Educational Inequalities Associated with Being Pushed Out
There are racial and ethnic disparities associated with school discipline practices and pushout rates. In addition, research suggests that urban schools have stricter school discipline practices and higher pushout rates. What remains unknown, however, is the relationship between racial and ethnic inequality, school discipline practices, and pushout rates across urban, rural, and suburban schools. Therefore, this study draws from the Texas Educati…
Big House on the Prairie: Rise of the Rural Ghetto and Prison Proliferation
Prisons as Panacea or Pariah? The Countervailing Consequences of the Prison Boom on the Political Economy of Rural Towns
The nascent literature on prison proliferation in the United States typically reveals negative impacts for communities of color. Given that Southern rural communities were the most likely to build during the prison boom (1970-2010), however, a more nuanced understanding of prison impact is warranted. Using a dataset matching and geocoding all 1663 U.S. prisons with their Census-appointed place, this study explores the countervailing consequences …
Mass Imprisonment across the Rural-Urban Interface
This study uses a novel dataset that includes information on the home addresses of all prisoners in Arkansas from 1993 to 2003 to document imprisonment rates and racial disparities in imprisonment rates across metropolitan and nonmetropolitan counties. We show how rural communities both receive and produce prisoners and that imprisonment and racial disparities in imprisonment vary more within different types of communities than across different t…
Reclaiming the Prison Boom: Considering Prison Proliferation in the Era of Mass Imprisonment
While mass imprisonment is a central topic of investigation within the sociology of punishment, less is known about the prison boom – the period beginning in 1970 during which the number of US prison facilities tripled. Surprisingly, our understanding of prison impact on rural communities is minimal despite nearly 70 percent of the new facilities being constructed in rural areas. With little fanfare, prison proliferation has severely altered the …
Privilege and Peril in Prison Town Studies: Power and Position in Fieldwork Encounters
Although scholars demonstrate the confluence of racism, punishment, and spatial constraint on urban communities from the effects of mass imprisonment, we have overlooked the effects that prison facilities have in disadvantaged rural communities of color. Scholars have not given proper attention to the prison town as an artifact of the prison boom. The prison town is also an important site from which to explore the confluence of criminal justice e…
The influence of incarceration and Re-entry on the availability of health care organizations in Arkansas
Studies show that ex-prisoners often experience more health problems than the general population; unfortunately, these issues follow them upon their release from prison. As such, it is possible re-entry rates signal the need for neighborhood-based health care organizations (HCOs). We ask: are incarceration and re-entry rates associated with the availability of HCOs?. MethodsUsing 2008 Central Business Pattern data, 2008 prison admissions and rele…
Inequality, Family Processes, and Health in the "New" Rural America
Rural America is commonly viewed as a repository of virtuous and patriotic values, deeply rooted in a proud immigrant history of farmers and industrious working-class White ethnics from northern Europe. These views are not always consistent with the population and socioeconomic realities of rural terrains. Exceptions to these stereotypes are self-evident among large poor racial/ethnic minorities residing in rural ghettos in the "dirty" South and …
Extending the Hyperghetto: Toward a Theory of Punishment, Race, and Rural Disadvantage
Within the sociology of punishment the hyperghetto provides a theoretical framework connecting structural and cultural linkages across mass incarceration, race, and urban disadvantage. Although this nexus is recognized as a focal point driving the prison building boom of the last 40 years, less is known about the role of rural disadvantage in this process. This is surprising given that more than 60% of the 1,600+ U.S. prison facilities are locate…
Inequality, Family Processes, and Health in the "New" Rural America
Rural America is commonly viewed as a repository of virtuous and patriotic values, deeply rooted in a proud immigrant history of farmers and industrious working-class White ethnics from northern Europe. These views are not always consistent with the population and socioeconomic realities of rural terrains. Exceptions to these stereotypes are self-evident among large poor racial/ethnic minorities residing in rural ghettos in the "dirty" South and …
Extending the Hyperghetto: Toward a Theory of Punishment, Race, and Rural Disadvantage
Within the sociology of punishment the hyperghetto provides a theoretical framework connecting structural and cultural linkages across mass incarceration, race, and urban disadvantage. Although this nexus is recognized as a focal point driving the prison building boom of the last 40 years, less is known about the role of rural disadvantage in this process. This is surprising given that more than 60% of the 1,600+ U.S. prison facilities are locate…
Mapping prison proliferation: Region, rurality, race and disadvantage in prison placement
Prisons as Panacea or Pariah? The Countervailing Consequences of the Prison Boom on the Political Economy of Rural Towns
The nascent literature on prison proliferation in the United States typically reveals negative impacts for communities of color. Given that Southern rural communities were the most likely to build during the prison boom (1970-2010), however, a more nuanced understanding of prison impact is warranted. Using a dataset matching and geocoding all 1663 U.S. prisons with their Census-appointed place, this study explores the countervailing consequences …
Policing, Punishment, and Place: Spatial-Contextual Analyses of the Criminal Legal System
Policing and punishment are unevenly distributed across geographic space. Research analyzing place-based variation in the criminal legal system is increasing, asking how community conditions contribute to variation in criminal justice outcomes and how multiple criminal justice exposures (e.g., policing and punishment) vary together in places. In this article, we identify spatial-contextual analyses of the criminal legal system and summarize their…
Pushing them to the edge: Suicide in immigrant detention centers as a product of organizational failure
Privilege and Peril in Prison Town Studies: Power and Position in Fieldwork Encounters
Although scholars demonstrate the confluence of racism, punishment, and spatial constraint on urban communities from the effects of mass imprisonment, we have overlooked the effects that prison facilities have in disadvantaged rural communities of color. Scholars have not given proper attention to the prison town as an artifact of the prison boom. The prison town is also an important site from which to explore the confluence of criminal justice e…
Mass Imprisonment across the Rural-Urban Interface
This study uses a novel dataset that includes information on the home addresses of all prisoners in Arkansas from 1993 to 2003 to document imprisonment rates and racial disparities in imprisonment rates across metropolitan and nonmetropolitan counties. We show how rural communities both receive and produce prisoners and that imprisonment and racial disparities in imprisonment vary more within different types of communities than across different t…
School Punishment and Education: Racial/Ethnic Disparities With Grade Retention and the Role of Urbanicity
There are racial/ethnic disparities associated with school punishment practices and academic progress. In addition, research suggests that urban schools have stricter school punishment practices and higher grade retention rates. What remains unknown, however, is the relationship between race/ethnicity, school punishment practices, and retention rates across urban, rural, and suburban schools. Thus, this study draws from the Texas Education Agency…
School Strictness and Education: Investigating Racial and Ethnic Educational Inequalities Associated with Being Pushed Out
There are racial and ethnic disparities associated with school discipline practices and pushout rates. In addition, research suggests that urban schools have stricter school discipline practices and higher pushout rates. What remains unknown, however, is the relationship between racial and ethnic inequality, school discipline practices, and pushout rates across urban, rural, and suburban schools. Therefore, this study draws from the Texas Educati…
Reclaiming the Prison Boom: Considering Prison Proliferation in the Era of Mass Imprisonment
While mass imprisonment is a central topic of investigation within the sociology of punishment, less is known about the prison boom – the period beginning in 1970 during which the number of US prison facilities tripled. Surprisingly, our understanding of prison impact on rural communities is minimal despite nearly 70 percent of the new facilities being constructed in rural areas. With little fanfare, prison proliferation has severely altered the …
The Prison Bust: Declining carceral capacity in an era of mass incarceration
While there is a growing literature investigating the causes and consequences of the US prison boom—the tripling of prison facilities between 1970 and 2000—much less is known about current patterns of prison closures. We use novel data capturing the universe of prison closures (N = 188) from 2000 to 2022 to identify and characterize what we term “the prison bust”—the period since 2000 when prison closures began to climb and eventually eclipse new…
Incarcerated During a Pandemic: Implications of Covid-19 for Jailed Individuals and Their Families
U.S. jails are typically over-crowded settings and have faced notable social distancing challenges and a lack of personal protective equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, institutions made swift policy changes that included canceling in-person visits, suspending programming, and releasing a proportion of people with low-level charges. That said, a still-significant number of individuals remained incarcerated for whom the consequenc…
Too Strict or Too Lenient: Examining The Role of School Strictness With Educational and Juvenile Justice Outcomes
Although there is research exploring how school punishment practices are influencing academic and juvenile justice outcomes, how strict or lenient school punishment practices are related to aspects of education such as grade retention and dropping out, as well as juvenile justice contact, remains unknown. This study draws from the Texas Education Agency’s Public Education Information Management System to investigate the relationship between stric…
Mapping prison proliferation: Region, rurality, race and disadvantage in prison placement
Extending the Hyperghetto: Toward a Theory of Punishment, Race, and Rural Disadvantage
Within the sociology of punishment the hyperghetto provides a theoretical framework connecting structural and cultural linkages across mass incarceration, race, and urban disadvantage. Although this nexus is recognized as a focal point driving the prison building boom of the last 40 years, less is known about the role of rural disadvantage in this process. This is surprising given that more than 60% of the 1,600+ U.S. prison facilities are locate…
Inequality, Family Processes, and Health in the "New" Rural America
Rural America is commonly viewed as a repository of virtuous and patriotic values, deeply rooted in a proud immigrant history of farmers and industrious working-class White ethnics from northern Europe. These views are not always consistent with the population and socioeconomic realities of rural terrains. Exceptions to these stereotypes are self-evident among large poor racial/ethnic minorities residing in rural ghettos in the "dirty" South and …
The influence of incarceration and Re-entry on the availability of health care organizations in Arkansas
Studies show that ex-prisoners often experience more health problems than the general population; unfortunately, these issues follow them upon their release from prison. As such, it is possible re-entry rates signal the need for neighborhood-based health care organizations (HCOs). We ask: are incarceration and re-entry rates associated with the availability of HCOs?. MethodsUsing 2008 Central Business Pattern data, 2008 prison admissions and rele…
Reclaiming the Prison Boom: Considering Prison Proliferation in the Era of Mass Imprisonment
While mass imprisonment is a central topic of investigation within the sociology of punishment, less is known about the prison boom – the period beginning in 1970 during which the number of US prison facilities tripled. Surprisingly, our understanding of prison impact on rural communities is minimal despite nearly 70 percent of the new facilities being constructed in rural areas. With little fanfare, prison proliferation has severely altered the …
Privilege and Peril in Prison Town Studies: Power and Position in Fieldwork Encounters
Although scholars demonstrate the confluence of racism, punishment, and spatial constraint on urban communities from the effects of mass imprisonment, we have overlooked the effects that prison facilities have in disadvantaged rural communities of color. Scholars have not given proper attention to the prison town as an artifact of the prison boom. The prison town is also an important site from which to explore the confluence of criminal justice e…
Big House on the Prairie: Rise of the Rural Ghetto and Prison Proliferation
Prisons as Panacea or Pariah? The Countervailing Consequences of the Prison Boom on the Political Economy of Rural Towns
The nascent literature on prison proliferation in the United States typically reveals negative impacts for communities of color. Given that Southern rural communities were the most likely to build during the prison boom (1970-2010), however, a more nuanced understanding of prison impact is warranted. Using a dataset matching and geocoding all 1663 U.S. prisons with their Census-appointed place, this study explores the countervailing consequences …
Mass Imprisonment across the Rural-Urban Interface
This study uses a novel dataset that includes information on the home addresses of all prisoners in Arkansas from 1993 to 2003 to document imprisonment rates and racial disparities in imprisonment rates across metropolitan and nonmetropolitan counties. We show how rural communities both receive and produce prisoners and that imprisonment and racial disparities in imprisonment vary more within different types of communities than across different t…
Too Strict or Too Lenient: Examining The Role of School Strictness With Educational and Juvenile Justice Outcomes
Although there is research exploring how school punishment practices are influencing academic and juvenile justice outcomes, how strict or lenient school punishment practices are related to aspects of education such as grade retention and dropping out, as well as juvenile justice contact, remains unknown. This study draws from the Texas Education Agency’s Public Education Information Management System to investigate the relationship between stric…
School Strictness and Education: Investigating Racial and Ethnic Educational Inequalities Associated with Being Pushed Out
There are racial and ethnic disparities associated with school discipline practices and pushout rates. In addition, research suggests that urban schools have stricter school discipline practices and higher pushout rates. What remains unknown, however, is the relationship between racial and ethnic inequality, school discipline practices, and pushout rates across urban, rural, and suburban schools. Therefore, this study draws from the Texas Educati…
Changing Prisons to Help People Change
It is important to consider the conditions of prison life in understanding how individuals rejoin society at the conclusion of their sentence. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is an evidence-based approach that promotes new ways of thinking and behaving for both incarcerated persons and correctional staff that will better prepare returning citizens to be valuable community members. We consider that “since criminal behavior is driven partly by c…
The 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic and Its Corresponding Data Boon: Issues With Pandemic-Related Data From Criminal Justice Organizations
Public organizations, including institutions in the U.S. criminal justice (CJ) system, have been rapidly releasing information pertaining to COVID-19. Even CJ institutions typically reticent to share information, like private prisons, have released vital COVID-19 information. The boon of available pandemic-related data, however, is not without problems. Unclear conceptualizations, stakeholders’ influence on data collection and release, and a lack…
Is There a Temporal Relationship between Covid-19 Infections among Prison Staff, Incarcerated Persons and the Larger Community in the United States
The relationship between COVID-19 infections among staff and incarcerated persons shows that staff is vital to infection control, and correctional administrators should also focus infection containment efforts on staff, in addition to incarcerated persons
Incarcerated During a Pandemic: Implications of Covid-19 for Jailed Individuals and Their Families
U.S. jails are typically over-crowded settings and have faced notable social distancing challenges and a lack of personal protective equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, institutions made swift policy changes that included canceling in-person visits, suspending programming, and releasing a proportion of people with low-level charges. That said, a still-significant number of individuals remained incarcerated for whom the consequenc…
Geodemographic insights on the Covid-19 pandemic in the State of Wisconsin and the role of risky facilities
School Punishment and Education: Racial/Ethnic Disparities With Grade Retention and the Role of Urbanicity
There are racial/ethnic disparities associated with school punishment practices and academic progress. In addition, research suggests that urban schools have stricter school punishment practices and higher grade retention rates. What remains unknown, however, is the relationship between race/ethnicity, school punishment practices, and retention rates across urban, rural, and suburban schools. Thus, this study draws from the Texas Education Agency…
Pushing them to the edge: Suicide in immigrant detention centers as a product of organizational failure
A study of Sars-COV-2 outbreaks in US federal prisons: The linkage between staff, incarcerated populations, and community transmission
We found significant evidence of community/staff/incarcerated population inter-linkage of SARS-COV-2 transmission. Further study is warranted to determine which control measures aimed at the incarcerated population and/or staff are most efficacious at preventing or controlling outbreaks
The impact of carceral churn and healthcare organizations on HIV/Aids incidence in Arkansas
Penal and healthcare institutions generate and mitigate community-level health inequality, respectively.•Arkansas Counties with high prison churn and disadvantage have higher rates of HIV/AIDS.•Hospital density moderates effect of prison churn on incidence of HIV/AIDS
The Prison Bust: Declining carceral capacity in an era of mass incarceration
While there is a growing literature investigating the causes and consequences of the US prison boom—the tripling of prison facilities between 1970 and 2000—much less is known about current patterns of prison closures. We use novel data capturing the universe of prison closures (N = 188) from 2000 to 2022 to identify and characterize what we term “the prison bust”—the period since 2000 when prison closures began to climb and eventually eclipse new…
Policing, Punishment, and Place: Spatial-Contextual Analyses of the Criminal Legal System
Policing and punishment are unevenly distributed across geographic space. Research analyzing place-based variation in the criminal legal system is increasing, asking how community conditions contribute to variation in criminal justice outcomes and how multiple criminal justice exposures (e.g., policing and punishment) vary together in places. In this article, we identify spatial-contextual analyses of the criminal legal system and summarize their…
Crime, Violence, and Criminal Justice in Rural America: Toward a Rural Neighborhood Effect
We review the current scholarship on rural policing, punishment, crime, and reentry. We shift the focus from the “square of crime” to an expansive understanding of crime and punishment in rural communities that uses neighborhood effects to study inequality across places. A central focus of the article is an investigation of the prison boom or the tripling of prison facilities in the United States. Ultimately, the prison boom is largely a rural ph…
Punishment is purple: The political economy of prison building
The United States is unique among rich countries in the world in its level of contemporary mass incarceration, a massive social change that has reshaped the nature of inequality and social mobility. We have more than tripled the number of prison facilities since 1970. Despite employing nearly 450,000 corrections officers, occupying a land mass of roughly 600 square miles, and costing conservatively $30 billion to build, this massive public works …
Assessing the Impact of Cannabis Decriminalization on Racial Disparities in Chicago's Cannabis Possession Arrests
Black and Hispanic neighborhoods have suffered the most severe consequences of the "war on drugs." As the war on drugs waned, cannabis legalization/decriminalization efforts increased across America. A prime example of decriminalization occurred in August of 2012 as the City of Chicago introduced a new law providing officers with option to ticket, rather than arrest, individuals caught in possession of 15 grams of cannabis or less. As cannabis po…
Criminology (22 works) · Political science (18 works) · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis (17 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Psychology (15 works) · Homelessness and Social Issues (14 works) · Crime Patterns and Interventions (13 works) · Law (13 works) · Prison (12 works) · Law (10 works)