Race,Poverty,and U.S. Children’s Exposure to Neighborhood Incarceration

Abstract

Recent research has documented negative associations between children’s welfare and mobility and their exposure to neighborhood incarceration. But inequality in such exposure among children in the United States is poorly understood. This study links tract-level census data to administrative data on prison admissions to measure 37.8 million children’s exposure to neighborhood incarceration in 2008, by race/ethnicity and poverty status. The average poor Black or African American child lived in a neighborhood where 1 in 174 working-age adults was admitted to prison annually, more than twice the rate of neighborhood prison admission experienced by the average U.S. child. Residential segregation and the spatial concentration of incarceration combine to create significant ethnoracial and economic inequality in the neighborhood experiences of U.S. children.

A growing body of research suggests that incarceration shapes children’s life chances, not only though family-member incarceration but also through the incarceration of community members. Children living in places with high rates of incarceration are more likely to experience child poverty (DeFina and Hannon 2010), to have poor cognitive outcomes in childhood (Haskins and McCauley 2019), and to experience teen motherhood and low intergenerational income mobility as adults (Manduca and Sampson 2019). However, ethnoracial and economic inequality in U.S. children’s exposure to neighborhood incarceration has not previously been measured on a large scale.

I link administrative data and census data to measure 37.8 million children’s exposure to neighborhood incarceration in 2008. Figure 1 plots the mean neighborhood prison admission rate experienced by children of different ethnoracial identities and family incomes, as well as the proportion of children in each group living in neighborhoods with different rates of prison admission.

Figure 1.

U.S. children’s exposure to neighborhood incarceration, by children’s race/ethnicity and family income, 2008.

The average U.S. child lived in a neighborhood where 2.5 people were admitted to state prison per 1,000 people aged 15 to 64 years. Overall, Black and African American children and children with family incomes below the poverty line were exposed to the highest rates of neighborhood prison admission, and Asian American children and children with family incomes at or above the poverty line were exposed to the lowest rates of neighborhood prison admission.

Racial and economic inequality interacted to produce deep divides in exposure. The average poor Black or African American child lived in a neighborhood with 5.7 prison admissions per 1,000, 1.4 times the rate of neighborhood prison admission experienced by the average poor U.S. child (4.0 admissions per 1,000) and more than twice the rate experienced by the average U.S. child. Seventeen percent of poor Black or African American children lived in neighborhoods where at least 1 in 100 working-age adults was admitted to prison annually, compared with 9.0 percent of all poor U.S. children and 4.0 percent of all U.S. children. Measured as the ratio of mean poverty levels to nonpoverty mean levels, economic inequality in children’s exposure to neighborhood prison admission was greatest among Asian American children and least among American Indian or Alaska Native children. Black-white differences in exposure overwhelmed differences across the poverty line: the average Black or African American child with a family income at or above the poverty line experienced 3.7 neighborhood prison admissions per 1,000, more than twice the rate experienced by the average poor white, not Hispanic or Latino, child (1.6 admissions per 1,000).

This study provides the first systematic account of inequality in children’s exposure to neighborhood incarceration. It highlights acute exposure to neighborhood incarceration among Black and African American children, especially those experiencing poverty. But it also reveals substantial exposure among other socially marginalized groups and significant variation in exposure within groups. Residential segregation and the spatial concentration of incarceration combine to create grossly disparate carceral contexts faced by children of different ethnoracial and economic backgrounds in the United States.

Supplemental Material

sj-pdf-1-srd-10.1177_23780231211067871 – Supplemental material for Race, Poverty, and U.S. Children’s Exposure to Neighborhood Incarceration

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-srd-10.1177_23780231211067871 for Race, Poverty, and U.S. Children’s Exposure to Neighborhood Incarceration by Alexander F. Roehrkasse in Socius