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Begin New Search Topic Mass Incarceration Political Geography North America

1. Mass Incarceration Retards Racial Integration

Author:
Peter Temin
Publication Date:
04-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
President Nixon replaced President Johnson’s War on Poverty with his War on Drugs in 1971. This new drug war was expanded by President Reagan and others to create mass incarceration. The United States currently has a higher percentage of its citizens incarcerated than any other industrial country. Although Blacks are only 13 percent of the population, they are 40 percent of the incarcerated. The literatures on the causes and effects of mass incarceration are largely distinct, and I combine them to show the effects of mass incarceration on racial integration. Racial prejudice produced mass incarceration, and mass incarceration now retards racial integration.
Topic:
Education, War on Drugs, Mass Incarceration, Integration, and Racism
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

2. The Political Economy of Mass Incarceration: An Analytical Model

Author:
Peter Temin
Publication Date:
05-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
This paper presents a model of mass incarceration in the United States, which has the largest proportion of its population imprisoned among advanced countries. The United States began to differ from other countries in the 1970s in response to changes in judicial policies. Although the Kerner Commission recommended integrating the black community into the larger American community, judicial policies went in the opposite direction. The model draws from several accounts of these changes and demonstrates that the United States has moved from one equilibrium position to another. It is driven by two equations, one for incarceration and one for crime. It explains why the growth of prisoners has ceased in the last decade and what would be needed to return to the original equilibrium.
Topic:
Political Economy, Prisons/Penal Systems, Mass Incarceration, and Police
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America