The justifications for the dramatic expansion of the prison population in recent decades have focused on public safety. Prior research on the efficacy of incarceration offers support for such claims, suggesting that increased incarceration saves lives by reducing the prevalence of homicide. We challenge this view by arguing that the effects of mass incarceration include collateral infant mortality consequences that call into question the number of lives saved through increased imprisonment. Using an instrumental variable estimation on state-level data from 1978 to 2010, this article simultaneously considers the effects of imprisonment on homicide and infant mortality to examine two of the countervailing mortality consequences of mass incarceration. Results suggest that while incarceration saves lives by lowering homicide rates, these gains are largely offset by the increases in infant mortality. Adjusted figures that count the number of increased infant deaths attributable to incarceration suggest that the mortality benefits of imprisonment over the past three decades are 82% lower than previously thought.
BinswangerIngrid A.SternMarc F.DeyoRichard A.HeagertyPatrick J.CheadleAllenElmoreJoann G.KoepsellThomas D. 2007. “Release from Prison: A High Risk of Death for Former Inmates.” New England Journal of Medicine356(2):157–65.
2.
BochSamantha J.FordJodi L. 2015. “C-reactive Protein Levels among U.S. Adults Exposed to Parental Incarceration.” Biological Research for Nursing17(5):574–84.
3.
BuonannoPaoloRaphaelSteven. 2013. “Incarceration and Incapacitation: Evidence from the 2006 Italian Collective Pardon.” American Economic Review103(6):2437–65.
4.
ChristianSteve. 2009. Children of Incarcerated Parents. Washington, DC: National Conference of State Legislatures.
5.
DonohueJohn J.IIISiegelmanPeter. 1995. Is the United States at the Optimal Rate of Crime? Working Paper No. 9404, American Bar Foundation, Chicago.
6.
FosterHollyHaganJohn. 2007. “Incarceration and Intergenerational Social Exclusion.” Social Problems54(4):399–433.
7.
FosterHollyHaganJohn. 2009. “The Mass Incarceration of Parents in America: Issues of Race-ethnicity, Collateral Damage to Children, and Prisoner Re-entry.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science623:179–94.
8.
GellerAmanda. 2013. Parental Incarceration and Family Disruption. Paper presented at the White House Workshop on Parental Incarceration, Washington, DC, August20. Slides available at http://goo.gl/K1GqtC.
9.
GellerAmandaCooperCarey E.GarfinkelIrwinSchwartz-SoicherOfiraMincyRonald B.2012. “Beyond Absenteeism: Father Incarceration and Child Development.” Demography49(1):49–76.
10.
GellerAmandaGarfinkelIrwinWesternBruce. 2011. “Paternal Incarceration and Support for Children in Fragile Families.” Demography48(1):25–47.
11.
GlazeLauren E.2011. Correctional Populations in the United States, 2010. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.
12.
GlazeLauren E.MaruschakLaura M. 2008. Parents in Prison and Their Minor Children. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.
13.
GrinsteadOlgaFaigelesBonnieBancroftCarrieZackBarry. 2001. “The Financial Cost of Maintaining Relationships with Incarcerated African American Men: A Survey of Women Prison Visitors.” Journal of African American Men6(1):59–69.
14.
HaganJohnColemanJuleigh Petty. 2001. “Returning Captives of the American War on Drugs: Issues of Community and Family Re-entry.” Crime & Delinquency47(3):352–67.
15.
HaganJohnDinovitzerRonit. 1999. “Children of the Prison Generation: Collateral Consequences of Imprisonment for Children and Communities.” Crime and Justice26:121–62.
16.
HarrisAlexesEvansHeatherBeckettKatherine. 2010. “Drawing Blood from Stones: Legal Debt and Social Inequality in the Contemporary United States.” American Journal of Sociology115(6):1753–99.
17.
HawkinsDarnell Felix. 2003. Violent Crime: Assessing Race and Ethnic Differences. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
18.
JohnsonRucker C.2009. “Ever-increasing Levels of Parental Incarceration and the Consequences for Children.” Pp. 177–206 in Do Prisons Make Us Safer? edited by StollM. A.RaphaelS.New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
19.
JohnsonRucker C.RaphaelSteven. 2009. “The Effects of Male Incarceration Dynamics on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome Infection Rates among African American Women and Men.” Journal of Law and Economics52(2):251–93.
20.
JohnsonRucker C.RaphaelSteven. 2012. “How Much Crime Reduction Does the Marginal Prisoner Buy?”Journal of Law & Economics55(2):275–310.
21.
LevittSteven D.1996. “The Effect of Prison Population Size on Crime Rates: Evidence from Prison Overcrowding Litigation.” Quarterly Journal of Economics111(2):319–51.
22.
LiedkaRaymond V.PiehlAnne MorrisonUseemBert. 2006. “The Crime-control Effect of Incarceration: Does Scale Matter?”Criminology & Public Policy5(2):245–76.
23.
LightMichael T.UlmerJeffery T.2016. “Explaining the Gaps in White, Black, and Hispanic Violence since 1990: Accounting for Immigration, Incarceration, and Inequality.” American Sociological Review81(2):290–315.
24.
LinkBruce G.PhelanJo. 1995. “Social Conditions as Fundamental Causes of Disease.” Journal of Health & Social Behavior 36(Extra Issue):80–94.
25.
MarvellThomas B.MoodyCarlysle E. 1994. “Prison Population-growth and Crime Reduction.” Journal of Quantitative Criminology10(2):109–40.
26.
MassogliaMichael. 2008. “Incarceration, Health, and Racial Disparities in Health.” Law & Society Review42(2):275–306.
27.
MassogliaMichaelPridemoreWilliam Alex. 2015. “Incarceration and Health.” Annual Review of Sociology41:291–310.
28.
National Center for Health Statistics. 2015. “National Vital Statistics System Improvements.” NCHS Fact SheetJuly:1–2.
29.
NobleDouglas J.PronovostPeter J. 2010. “Under-reporting of Patient Safety Incidents Reduces Health Care’s Ability to Quantify and Accurately Measure Harm Reduction.” Journal of Patient Safety6(4):247–50.
30.
NoonanMargaretRohloffHarleyGinder.Scott2015. Mortality in Local Jails and State Prisons, 2000–2013: Statistical Tables. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics.
31.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. 2015. OECD.Stat (Health Status—Infant mortality rates). doi:10.1787/83dea506-en
32.
PattersonEvelyn J.2010. “Incarcerating Death: Mortality in U.S. State Correctional Facilities, 1985–1998.” Demography47(3):587–607.
PridemoreWilliam. 2014. “The Mortality Penalty of Incarceration: Evidence from a Population-based Case-control Study of Working-age Males.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior55(2):215–33.
35.
RaphaelStevenStollMichael A.2013. Why Are So Many Americans in Prison?New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
36.
ReidpathDaniel D.AlloteyPascale. 2003. “Infant Mortality Rate as an Indicator of Population Health.” Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health57(5):344–46.
37.
SampsonRobert J.2011. “The Incarceration Ledger: Toward a New Era in Assessing Societal Consequences.” Criminology & Public Policy10(3):819–28.
SinghGopal K.KoganMichael D.2007. “Persistent Socioeconomic Disparities in Infant, Neonatal, and Post-neonatal Mortality Rates in the United States, 1969–2001.” Pediatrics119(4):e928–39.
40.
SpelmanWilliam. 2000. “What Recent Studies Do (and Don’t) Tell Us about Imprisonment and Crime.” Pp. 419–94 in Crime and Justice: A Review of the Research, edited by Tonry.M.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
41.
StaigerDouglasStockJames H. 1997. “Instrumental Variables Regression with Weak Instruments.” Econometrica65(3):557–86.
42.
SykesBryanPettitBecky. 2014. “Mass Incarceration, Family Complexity, and the Reproduction of Childhood Disadvantage.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science654(1):127–49.
43.
TurneyKristin. 2014. “The Consequences of Paternal Incarceration for Maternal Neglect and Harsh Parenting.” Social Forces92(4):1607–36.
44.
TurneyKristinWildemanChristopher. 2013. “Redefining Relationships: Explaining the Countervailing Consequences of Paternal Incarceration for Parenting.” American Sociological Review78(6):949–79.
45.
TurneyKristinWildemanChristopher. 2015. “Detrimental for Some? Heterogeneous Effects of Maternal Incarceration on Child Well-being.” Criminology & Public Policy14(1):125–56.
46.
WakefieldSaraUggenChristopher. 2010. “Incarceration and Stratification.” Annual Review of Sociology36:387–406.
47.
WakefieldSaraWildemanChristopher. 2014. Children of the Prison Boom: Mass Incarceration and the Future of American Inequality. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
48.
WesternBruce. 2006. Punishment and Inequality in America. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
49.
WildemanChristopher. 2009. “Parental Imprisonment, the Prison Boom, and the Concentration of Childhood Disadvantage.” Demography46(2):265–80.
50.
WildemanChristopher. 2012. “Imprisonment and Infant Mortality.” Social Problems59(2):228–57.
51.
WildemanChristopher. 2016. “Incarceration and Population Health in Wealthy Democracies.” Criminology54(2):360–82.
52.
WildemanChristopherAndersenSigne HaldLeeHedwigKarlsonKristian Bernt. 2014. “Parental Incarceration and Child Mortality in Denmark.” American Journal of Public Health104(3):428–33.
53.
WilliamsSarah C. P.2013. “Gone Too Soon: What’s behind the High U.S. Infant Mortality Rate.” Stanford Medicine Magazine Fall:12–15.
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
