Tracking the Causes and Consequences of Racial Disparities in Imprisonment

帕梅拉·奥利弗威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校这个试点项目将检验建立一个数据库的可行性，该数据库将使PI能够研究监禁上升的总体趋势和监禁中不断上升的种族差异，以及这些趋势中的地理和时间差异。PI将使用有关逮捕、监禁的官方数据集与社会、经济和人口因素相结合来创建新的纵向数据集，使人们能够控制当前和以前报告的犯罪、特定种族的逮捕率以及预测监禁率的社会因素。从横截面上看，最严重的犯罪被发现只占监狱入学率种族差异的很小一部分；毒品犯罪和财产犯罪的不同逮捕率和不同监狱/逮捕比率是监禁差异的主要原因。这项研究试图确定导致对非裔美国人毒品犯罪和较低程度犯罪的高执法水平的因素。将检验一系列假设，即，这种执法是对先前严重暴力犯罪水平上升的反应，对移民或少数民族和白人融合增加的反应，对影响犯罪或警务的外生宏观经济或政治因素的反应，或对诸如毒品恐慌等“冲击”的反应。其次，它试图确定非洲裔美国人的高监禁率的后果，测试假设，在不加控制的情况下，黑人监禁率对黑人的经济福祉和家庭稳定产生不利影响，间接导致犯罪率上升。现有的官方数据集将被处理，以创建新的纵向数据集，其中包含关于种族和犯罪的逮捕和监禁率的县级数据。以及各种各样的社会、经济和法律指标。该数据集将在1983-1997年期间构建，并通过合并来自国家矫正报告方案和统一犯罪报告的数据，以及来自人口普查局、司法统计局和其他来源的关于执法、矫正、社会、经济和人口因素的其他数据来完成。

SES-0136833Pamela OliverUniversity of Wisconsin, MadisonThis pilot project will examine the feasibility of creating a database that will allow the PI to study both the overall trend of rising imprisonment and rising racial disparities in imprisonment, and geographical and temporal differences in these trends. The PI will use official data sets on arrests, imprisonment merged with social, economic, and demographic factors to create the new longitudinal data set that allow one to control for current and previous reported crimes and race-specific arrest rates as well as social factors in predicting imprisonment rates. Cross-sectionally, the most serious crime is found to account for very little of the racial disparity in prison admissions; differential arrest rates and differential prison/arrest ratios in drug offenses and property crimes account for the majority of imprisonment disparity. The research seeks to determine the factors that lead to high enforcement levels against African Americans for drug offenses and lower-level offenses. A range of hypotheses will be tested, i.e., this enforcement arises as a reaction to prior elevated levels of serious violent crimes, to increasing in-migration or integration of minorities and whites, to exogenous macroeconomic or political factors that affect crime or policing, or to "shocks" such as drug panics. Secondly, it seeks to identify the consequences of high rates of imprisonment of African Americans, testing the hypothesis that, net of controls, black imprisonment rates adversely affects black economic well-being and family stability in a manner that indirectly contribute to increasing crime ratesExisting official data sets will be processed to create this new longitudinal data set containing county-level data on race-and offense-specific arrest and incarceration rates, along with a wide variety of social, economic and legal indicators. The data set will be constructed for the time period of 1983-1997 and completed by merging data from the National Corrections Reporting Program and the Uniform Crime Reports, along with other data on law enforcement, corrections, social, economic and demographic factors from the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Justice Statistics and other sources.