John, first, I’ve really been enjoying your posts. Please keep them coming. Second, the term mass incarceration is highly politically charged and often used by progressives of all kinds (academics, activists, politicians) to suggest that the United States (or at least parts of it) locks up people of color at massive rates for no legitimate reason. If you overlaid violent crime data on the same city maps in Chicago and New Jersey, you would see a high degree of spatial correlation with the rates of incarceration driving the Illinois and New Jersey prison populations. And behind each one of those data points was a crime, an investigation, a guilty plea, or a conviction at trial. Perhaps the better term to describe the phenomenon is “concentrated offending,” driven by guns and all of the social ills that continue to plague American cities. High incarceration rates are a sad commentary on American society, but they are not irrational.
Thanks, Mike! I appreciate it. I'm going to try to post consistently in 2025 like I have the last 1.5-2 months. I agree with a lot of what you said. The fabric and informal social control, collective efficacy, etc. in these neighborhoods is shattered, leading, in part, to high levels of crime and violence. There's a great graphic from Sampson and Loeffler's (2010) article that overlays rates of incarceration, crime rates, and concentrated disadvantage (CD) at the neighborhood level in Chicago. Crime rates mattered, but there is an amplification effect of high rates of CD even among high crime neighborhoods. I'll post the graphic and what S & C says about it in a Note.
John, first, I’ve really been enjoying your posts. Please keep them coming. Second, the term mass incarceration is highly politically charged and often used by progressives of all kinds (academics, activists, politicians) to suggest that the United States (or at least parts of it) locks up people of color at massive rates for no legitimate reason. If you overlaid violent crime data on the same city maps in Chicago and New Jersey, you would see a high degree of spatial correlation with the rates of incarceration driving the Illinois and New Jersey prison populations. And behind each one of those data points was a crime, an investigation, a guilty plea, or a conviction at trial. Perhaps the better term to describe the phenomenon is “concentrated offending,” driven by guns and all of the social ills that continue to plague American cities. High incarceration rates are a sad commentary on American society, but they are not irrational.
Thanks, Mike! I appreciate it. I'm going to try to post consistently in 2025 like I have the last 1.5-2 months. I agree with a lot of what you said. The fabric and informal social control, collective efficacy, etc. in these neighborhoods is shattered, leading, in part, to high levels of crime and violence. There's a great graphic from Sampson and Loeffler's (2010) article that overlays rates of incarceration, crime rates, and concentrated disadvantage (CD) at the neighborhood level in Chicago. Crime rates mattered, but there is an amplification effect of high rates of CD even among high crime neighborhoods. I'll post the graphic and what S & C says about it in a Note.