http://ctx.sagepub.com/Contexts http://ctx.sagepub.com/content/1/3/37The online version of this article can be found at: DOI: 10.1525/ctx.2002.1.3.37 2002 1: 37ContextsBruce Western and Becky PettitBeyond Crime and Punishment: Prisons and Inequality Published by: http://www.sagepublications.comOn behalf of: American Sociological Association can be found at:ContextsAdditional services and information for http://ctx.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts: http://ctx.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions: http://ctx.sagepub.com/content/1/3/37.refs.htmlCitations: What is This? - Aug 1, 2002Version of Record >> at UNIV WASHINGTON LIBRARIES on January 3, 2013ctx.sagepub.comDownloaded fromfall 2002 contexts 37beyond crime and punishment: prisons and inequalityfeature article bruce western and becky pettitEven during the economic boom of the 1990s, moreyoung black men who had dropped out of school were inprison than on the job. Despite rapid growth in employmentthroughout the economy, released prisoners in the 1990searned little and were often unemployed. In these two ways—high imprisonment rates among disadvantaged men and pooreconomic prospects for ex-inmates—the penal system affectsinequality in the American society.Inequality is disguised because data on employment oftendo not include the mostly poor men who are locked awaybehind bars. When we count prisoners among the unem-ployed, we find that racial inequality in employment and earn-ings is much greater than when we ignore them. Takingprisoners into account substantially alters our understandingof how young black men are faring, dramatically so when wefocus on young black men with little education. In addition,the penal system fuels inequality by reducing the wages andemployment prospects of released prisoners. The low-wage,unstable employment they experience when they return tosociety deepens the divisions of race and class.For most of the 20th century, imprisonment policies hadlittle effect on social inequality. Prison was reserved for themost violent or incorrigible offenders, and the inmate popu-lation was consequently small. This began to change in theearly 1970s when stricter law enforcement enlarged theprison population. While incarceration once used to flag dan-gerousness or persistent deviance, by 2000 it had become acommon event for poor minority males.the expansion of the penal systemBetween 1920 and 1970, about one-tenth of one percentof Americans were confined in prisons. The prison populationincreased sixfold in the three decades after 1970. By June2000, about 1.3 million people were held in state and federalprisons, and 620,000 inmates were in local jails. This translatesinto a total incarceration rate of seven-tenths of one percentof the U.S. population. The current incarceration rate is fivetimes the historical average of the 1925-70 period and six toeight times the incarceration rates in Western Europe. Withthe important exception of homicide, however, American lev-els of crime are similar to those in Western Europe.These numbers mask the concentration of imprisonmentamong young black men with little schooling. Although thereChanges in government policy on crime and punishment have put many poor minority men behind bars, more than theirarrest rates would indicate. The growth of the penal system has also obscured the extent of economic inequality and sowedthe seeds for greater inequality in the future.figure 1Percentage of Incarcerated Men, 1980 & 1999, by Race and Education403020100White Black1980White Black1999White Black1980White Black1999All Men, 18-65 Male High School Dropouts, 22-30Percentage inPrison or Jail at UNIV WASHINGTON LIBRARIES on January 3, 2013ctx.sagepub.comDownloaded fromcontexts fall 200238are no official statistics, we’ve calculated the proportion ofpenal inmates among black and white men at different agesand levels of education by combining data from labor forceand correctional surveys. Incarceration rates doubled amongworking-age men between 1980 and 1999 but increasedthreefold for high school dropouts in their twenties. By 1999,fewer than one percent of working-age white men werebehind bars, compared to 7.5 percent of working-age blackmen (figure 1). Figures for young black unskilled men are espe-cially striking: 41 percent of all black male high schooldropouts aged 22-30 were in prison or jail at midyear in 1999.Although 9 out of 10 inmates are male (92 percent),women represent the fastest-growing segment of the inmatepopulation. During the recent penal expansion, the femaleinmate population has grown more than 60 percent faster thanthe male inmate population. African-American women haveexperienced the greatest increase in criminal justice supervision.Racial disparities in incarceration are even more stark whenone counts the men who have ever been incarcerated ratherthan just those in prison on a given day. In 1989, about 2 percent of white men in their early thirties had ever been toprison compared to 13 percent of black men of the same age(figure 2). Ten years later, these rates had increased by 50 per-cent. The risks of going to prison are about three times high-er for high school dropouts. At the end of the 1990s, 14percent of white and 59 percent of black male high schooldropouts in their early thirties had prison records.The high rate of imprisonment among black men is oftenexplained by differences in patterns of arrest and criminalbehavior. Blacks are eight times more likely to be incarceratedthan whites. With the important exception of drug offenses,blacks are overrepresented among prison inmates due to racedifferences in crime and arrest statistics. In 1991, for instance,black men accounted for 55 percent of all homicide arrestsand 47 percent of homicide offenders in prison. Drug offens-es aside, about three-quarters of the racial disparity in impris-onment can be linked to racial differences in arrests and incriminal offending as reported in surveys of crime victims.Although age and educational differences in incarcerationhave not been studied as closely as race, crime rates are alsoknown to be high among young, poorly educated men. Inshort, young, black, male high school dropouts are overrepre-sented in prison mainly because they commit a disproportion-figure 2Percentage of 30 to 34