Mass Incarceration and Racial Inequality

Abstract

Despite two decades of declining crime rates, the United States continues to incarcerate a historically and comparatively large segment of the population. Moreover, incarceration and other forms of criminal justice contact ranging from police stops to community supervision are disproportionately concentrated among African American and Latino men. Mass incarceration, and other ways in which the criminal justice system infiltrates the lives of families, has critical implications for inequality. Differential rates of incarceration damage the social and emotional development of children whose parents are in custody or under community supervision. The removal through incarceration of a large segment of earners reinforces existing income and wealth disparities. Patterns of incarceration and felony convictions have devastating effects on the level of voting, political engagement, and overall trust in the legal system within communities. Incarceration also has damaging effects on the health of families and communities. In short, the costs of mass incarceration are not simply collateral consequences for individuals but are borne collectively, most notably by African Americans living in acutely disadvantaged communities that experience high levels of policing and surveillance. In this article, we review racial and ethnic differences in exposure to the criminal justice system and its collective consequences.