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Article Excerpt
ARE PRISONS CRIHINOGENIC?
ALTHOUGH THE PRISON WAS ORIGINALLY CONCEIVED FOR THE NOBLE purpose of rehabilitating criminal offenders, critics from its very inception worried that the cure was worse than the disease (Rothman 2005 [1971]; Garland 1993)." In modern parlance they regarded the prison as an inherently criminogenic institution, which reinforces the criminal behaviors of its occupants. This line of criticism is most relevant today, when a potent rationale for current US criminal justice policies, which I term mass incarceration, is the public safety benefits from incapacitating actual offenders and deterring potential ones (see, for example, Levitt, 2004). If the prison experience actually hardens inmates into more serious offenders, then the incapacitation effect is at best transitory (see also Freeman, 1995:36 and Blumstein, 1998: 130-31; on deterrent effects, see Nagin, 1998, Spelman, 2000, and Western, 2006). As Jeremy Travis (2005) fervently reminds us, the vast majority of inmates "all come back" to their communities and so can in principle perpetrate more harm than they committed prior to their initial incarceration.
This classic argument identifies a potential social cost of mass incarceration, which, if large, can negate the conventional utilitarian benefit-cost argument in its favor. To elaborate my point, consider the not too hypothetical case of a nonviolent marginal drug offender, who is sentenced to prison rather than receiving a nonincarcerative sanction to a drug court. If the individual faces a greater likelihood of recidivism because of his prison record, then the total social costs of these "get tough" policies should also include the additional harm from his postrelease criminal activity and the administrative costs related to his subsequent arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment.
Even this more comprehensive approach significantly understates the social costs of mass incarceration. It does not begin to reckon the manifold losses directly inflicted on marginal drug offenders, which one epidemiologist has estimated in terms of "years of life lost" (Drucker, 2002). And it discounts other unintende d negative social impacts, ranging from the disruptions to and burdens on families (especially children), the erosion of neighborhood social capital (and so weaker informal social control mechanisms), and political alienation and distrust of public authority (Pattillo, Weiman, and Western, 2004; Hagan and Dinovitzer, 1999; Rose and Clear, 1998; Clear, Rose, and Ryder, 2001; Mauer and Chesney-Lind, 2002; Huo and Tyler, 2002; and Travis and Waul, 2004).
Prisons can exert a criminogenic influence on inmates through distinct causal mechanisms. The most direct emphasizes peer effects in which inmates are assimilated into prison culture and gang networks whether through a social osmosis or sheer survival instinct. As shown by Chen and Shapiro (2004), its impact is especially powerful when inmates on the margin are assigned to higher security prisons, where they come into contact with more violent repeat offenders. According to their estimates, the placement of a marginal inmate into a low rather than a minimum security facility increases his recidivism rates--measured by the risk of being arrested within three years of release--by 33 percentage points.
I focus instead on an indirect mechanism, the impact of a prison record/experience on former inmates' labor market outcomes. (1) Like other formative social institutions such as marriage, the labor market is integral to the successful reintegration of released prisoners into their families and communities (Laub, Nagin, Sampson, 1998; Sampson, Laub, and Wimer, 2006; Western, 2006). Their path away from crime and future prison spells--what criminologists call desistance--depends critically on employment, specifically finding and holding a good job (Sampson and Laub, 1993; Hagan, 1993; Uggen, 2000; Bushway and Reuter, 2002). By contrast, the probability of recidivism--cycling out of and back into prison--varies inversely with an individual's labor market opportunities, measured by both employment and real wage rates.
A prison record/experience can close off this desistance pathway by increasing the barriers to the formal labor market, where the job search is more likely to turn up steadier, higher paying employment. These labor market impacts are especially detrimental to young, less-educated inner city minority men because of their widely divergent prospects of employment and incarceration since the mid-1970s (Holzer, Offner, Sorensen, 2005; Bonczar and Beck, 1997; Bonczar, 2003; Pettit and Western, 2004; Raphael, 2006). Viewed from a life-course perspective, a prison record/experience delays the pivotal employment turning point, which is an important precondition for other crucial transitions like marriage (Western, 2006; Raphael, 2007). Consequently, former inmates will face significantly higher risks of recidivism and hence future prison spells, especially when they are released into weaker labor markets. In other words, they are more likely to fall into a vicious cycle, a revolving door of prison release-crime-reincarceration.
In this article I elaborate and test empirically this labor market mechanism and in doing concretize a potentially significant social cost of mass incarceration. The core of my analysis is contained in the next two sections. I first document the labor market conditions that influence the employment prospects of released prisoners. Synthesizing a variety of recent empirical research, I then answer the dual questions of whether and how a prison record affects former inmates' labor market trajectories. Specifically, I specify and test a version of the "secondary labor market hypothesis." Because most previous inmates were mired in secondary jobs prior to their incarceration, I consider the impact of a prison record/experience on their chances of "moving up" to good jobs with higher pay, steadier hours, and greater mobility (Bernhardt, Morris, Handcock, and Scott, 2001; Andersson, Holzer, and Lane, 2005).
In the conclusion I draw out the somber implications of my labor market analyses by examining trends in recidivism rates and their social costs. The evidence suggests that the War on Drugs policies have trapped an increasing number of more marginal drug offenders in the revolving door of recidivism, conventionally defined. It also highlights a new and quantitatively important recidivism risk for released prisoners, the revocation of parole on technical violations that Jeremy Travis likens to an alternative sentencing regime applied at the "back end" of the criminal justice system (Travis, 2005: 47-52). To break out of this vicious cycle, my analysis shows, would demand vast direct government interventions in the labor market. As a more modest first step, I consider policy innovations like drug courts that place marginal drug offenders in treatment programs rather than prison.
In illustrating and elaborating my arguments, I focus on the War on Drug policies and on marginal drug offenders. My reasons are several. First, the War on Drugs constituted a true social experiment, an exogenous shift in criminal justice policy that cannot be readily explained by the greater prevalence or severity of drug and drug-related crimes. Rather, it is best understood as a "moral" panic, precipitated in part by the tragic but transitory episode of lethal gun violence in the social regulation of the crack trade (Weiman, Stoll, and Bushway, 2007).
Second, the War on Drugs policies were quantitatively important in instituting the regime of mass incarceration. Drug offenders accounted for almost one-third of the growth in the prison population and of new prison admissions between 1984 and 1995, when prison incarceration rates more than doubled from 188 to 411 inmates per 100,000 people. Moreover, these policies targeted inner city minority males and so contributed to the increasing prevalence of incarceration among African-American males, which increased from 10 to 15 percent over same period (Blumstein, 1993; Tonry, 1995; Mauer, 1999; Bonczar, 2003).
Finally, these policies indiscriminately incarcerated marginal, not just more serious, offenders. The notion of a marginal offender has two distinct connotations (Weiman, Stoll, and Bushway, 2007: 51). Criminologically, it refers to those who commit fewer, less serious violent crimes per time period. Economically, they are literally on the margin between legal and illicit work and allocate their time between the two depending on the rewards and risks of each. In referring to drug offenders, I tend to use both senses interchangeably. Although there are clear exceptions to this implicit claim, such as gun-wielding drug gang members, the two notions do apply to "jugglers," the modal drug offender in state prisons (Sevigny and Caulkins, 2004: 422). Moreover, they are precisely the population for whom drug courts are an appropriate and effective treatment.
THE LABOR HARKET FOR RELEASED PRISONERS
The Supply Side
Like the labor market itself, I parse the "barriers to entry" facing released prisoners into the supply and demand sides. The supply factors specify the more abstract notions of human and social capital: the array of personal characteristics and social attachments that influence an individual's job prospects. In this case researchers have emphasized former offenders' significant "deficits" and "challenges," in addition to their prison record and experiences. Through surveys of prisoners prior to and after their release, the Urban Institute Returning Home study directly explored these critical determinants of reentry into the labor market, including their expectations and motivations, familial and social networks, and neighborhood characteristics.
Some of their main findings are reproduced in table 1 (which also includes a list of references). If the survey responses can be taken at their word, then these inmates on the verge of release were certainly eager to find a job but also anxious about their prospects. The vast majority regarded employment as "important," especially if they wanted to "go straight" and to avoid a return trip to prison. At the very least their active participation in the labor market would satisfy technical conditions of parole. Still, to many former offenders a job would help to repair their frayed familial relations, friendships, and finances, and so would minimize their opportunities and inducements to engage in criminal behavior.
Despite their overall positive attitudes about employment, released prisoners expressed considerable uncertainty about their employability. When asked about it directly, a significant fraction-from 30 to 60 percent--expected difficulties along the way. Even the Maryland inmates, who predicted an easy transition into the labor market, listed numerous potential impediments that the survey also documented. Prior to their incarceration, these individuals lacked the educational background, work experience, and hence skills to land a good job. At most one-half had finished high school or earned a high school equivalency (GED) certificate, and only a small fraction had some college education, an increasingly necessary credential in the "new" economy. Around two-thirds reported working just prior to their incarceration, but most likely stitched together a portfolio of jobs from the formal, informal, and illegal sectors...
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