why do pro wrestlers die young?

were i teaching soc of deviance this semester, i might build an assignment around paul farhi's fine washington post piece on the early deaths of professional wrestlers.

if you read closely, you'll find a subcultural/network story, a biological story, a psychological story, a masculinities story, an institutional story, a macro-structural story, and a very sad story.

but this is good journalism as well as good data for a sociology assignment. as my local dailies have been cutting bone and muscle for about a year now, i'm all the more appreciative of a well-written and carefully researched feature article.

arts in criminal justice conference

i think i'd find some great inspiration if i could get away for the arts in criminal justice conference in philadelphia this october. here's a blurb/pitch from the organizers:

The speakers and panelists at the ARTS IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE NATIONAL CONFERENCE in Philadelphia on October 3 through 6 represent the leading experts in arts in corrections. They’re artists, activists, correction officials, and policy makers, coming together to further the goals of criminal and restorative justice, and you won’t want to miss the opportunity to hear them!

Some session highlights include:

· Pandora's Cell: Free Expression in Confined Spaces
Moderated by Judith Tannenbaum, San Francisco Writers Corps
Conference keynote Luis Rodriguez will participate in this panel that explores the inherent paradoxes of making (and sharing) art in prison. What are the gifts and difficulties of opening one's senses and spirit in a world of "keys, bars, guns being racked" (as prison poet Spoon Jackson put it)? How do teaching artists approach their work in such an environment? What is required to be true to Nazim Hikmet's observation that one can serve time "as long as the jewel/in the left side of your chest doesn't lose its luster"?

· A Discussion with Wardens and Superintendents
Moderated by David Kairys, Activist and Professor of Constitutional Law, Temple University School of Law
Join Laura Bedard, PhD, Deputy Secretary, Florida Department of Corrections; David DiGuglielmo, Superintendent of SCI-Graterford (PA); Robert Green, Warden, Montgomery County (MD) Prison; Edward Ignarri, Director of Rehabilitation, Monroe County (NY) Jail; and Leon King, III, Esq., Commissioner of the Philadelphia County Prison System, for a discussion about their commitment to the arts and the successful and comprehensive arts programming in their facilities.

· Special Challenges to the Juvenile System
Moderated by Grady Hillman, Founder, Southwest Correctional Arts Network
In this session, panelists will describe a challenge that they and their organization have faced with the delivery of arts programming in juvenile justice or with working in the juvenile justice system in general, and how they successfully addressed it. They will also share the most daunting challenge they're now contending with.

· Michigan: The University-based Approach
Moderated by Buzz Alexander, Founder, Prison Creative Arts Project at the University of Michigan
The speakers from this university-based project will talk about the essential values, practices, and impact on students and the incarcerated behind 12 annual prisoner art exhibitions, 456 plays in 22 prisons, five juvenile facilities, four Detroit high schools, and much more over the past 18 years.

homeless world cup

scotland took home the 2007 homeless world cup this summer. have you heard about this?

the league was founded in 2001 as a way to use sport to unite homeless people around the world. though i cannot vouch for their study's methodology, the organization reports to have made a path-changing difference in the lives of most participants.

cool idea. and, at a time when the united states seems to be stumbling on the world stage, i'm especially proud that these americans took home the fair play award in 2005. good on ya, yanks!

football players, rockers, and the SES gradient

a journal of epidemiology and community health study shows high rates of early death among musicians. the sample was drawn from the ranks of especially successful musicians -- those playing on the top 1000 best-selling albums. i'd hypothesize that a comparison of musicians and non-musicians in a sample taken from the general population would reveal much smaller differences. that is, casual or frustrated rockers likely live longer than successful rockers.

one might make sense of this in terms of exposure to risk factors such as substance use, stds, and roadfood. where else might one expect a positive relationship between professional success and mortality? certainly one sees high rates of early death and health problems among professional football players and wrestlers, due in part to weight-related ailments.

kids still grow up dreaming about becoming rock stars and pro football players, of course, but i would imagine that their fallback/safety jobs are almost always better for their long-term health. if one buys the argument that the most serious and persistent criminal offenders are most likely to be incarcerated, mike massoglia's work has shown a similar gradient for deviant work: those incarcerated as young adults are subject to serious health deficits by midlife.

for a morbid take on the musician/health study, you might try the which dead rock star are you? quiz. according to said quiz, i share certain characteristics with the deceased king of rock and roll pictured above.

citizen vince

ms. sarah is posting on citizen vince, a novel in which an ex-felon "comes face to face with his ambivalence about turning legit when his voter registration card comes in the mail." dang, i'd better read this one.

i haven't spent much time with fiction this summer, but sarah's review drew me in quite effectively. check out the artful passage she reproduces at the end of her post. i would have purchased it online, but i'm sort of hoping to gravy-train off sarah's copy...

outsiders and maryland prisoner reentry

greg garland of the baltimore sun offers a nicely detailed report on recent changes in prison release practices in maryland:

Most inmates in the rural prisons in Western Maryland and on the Eastern Shore are from the Baltimore-Washington metro area. When an inmate's sentence ends, he is given $50 in cash and dropped off at a bus station. Under the new policy, corrections officials say, inmates will be transported to a prison in Baltimore or one closer to their home community a day or so before discharge.

the change appears to be motivated, in part, by a desire to facilitate reintegration of prisoners in baltimore and, in part, to appease outstate political leaders. for example, the mayor of hagerstown doesn't want any baltimore residents released into his community.

The Herald-Mail of Hagerstown recently published an opinion piece by the mayor, in which he responded to a letter to the editor an inmate had written on the issue of prisoner releases in Hagerstown. "The bottom line is this," Mayor Bruchey wrote. "If you weren't a resident of Hagerstown or Washington County before your incarceration, we definitely don't want you as one when you are released."

ouch. so, is there any evidence that former inmates from baltimore are responsible for a crime wave in hagerstown or elsewhere? not so much:

a study done by the department found only eight of the 622 inmates from other areas who were released from prisons near Hagerstown and Cumberland between January and June of this year remained in the area. The five prisons in those two communities house about 9,000 inmates. Six of the eight were working in jobs that they started before their release, and the other two have family in the area, corrections officials said.

not in my airport!

i felt woefully uninformed when i learned that senator larry craig (r-idaho) was picked up for lewd public restroom behavior at my airport. what's all this about foot-tapping? and blocking the door with one's luggage? this appears to be a well-choreographed old-school tearoom rather than an ill-timed individual act. there was apparently enough activity in this restroom to motivate the rather extensive sting operation that netted the distinguished senator.

highway rest stops i can understand, since locals can drive there with little cost. but isn't the high-surveillance post-9/11 airport a strange place for anonymous hookups? i mean, the only folks who can regularly hang out in such restrooms are airport employees (who do not appear to be a particularly randy bunch) and those with overpriced tickets and planes to catch. are there message boards where one posts invitations such as, "hey boys, i've got two hours between flights at MSP and i'm looking for a good time in a busy restroom. no liberals." the social organization of the activity just doesn't make sense to me, unless there is waaaaay more pent-up demand among weary business travelers than i'd imagined. maybe so, maybe so...

shotspotter maps

this week, we are welcoming a wonderful new cohort of graduate students to the department and our community. as a sociological criminologist, they sometimes ask me about the relative safety of various neighborhoods. usually they ask me such questions immediately after they have signed a long-term lease.

i can offer personal impressions, but generally prefer to back them up with some fresh public-use data. official crime reports, however, can be subject to biases in reporting, enforcement, or processing. one alternative data source is the ShotSpotter technology now used to track gunshots in minneapolis. when sensors detect the sound of gunfire, the system triangulates the location of the gunshot. the police department then plots the data and puts their weekly shots fired maps online, along with precinct-specific maps tracking violent crime and other crime. given the potential biases in other sources of crime data, and the common-if-not-universal aversion to neighborhood gunfire, the new gunshot maps might offer a useful tool for apartment hunters. just remember to look before you lease.

links:
gunshot maps
crime maps

sealing records

like many weary travelers, i mostly encounter usa today when it mysteriously washes up outside my hotel room door. today's edition features a timely op-ed on the merits of sealing certain types of criminal records. the authors are stephen salzburg and margy love -- co-chairs of the american bar association's commission on effective criminal sanctions. the usa today editorial staff offers a prebuttal, arguing against sealing and expungement.

12.5 years? that would get you out by february of 2020

sure, imprisoning innocent people is not "ideal," but isn't the greater tragedy that we're finding out about it?
- stephen colbert

with classes starting soon, crim instructors might be interested in showing a video clip of stephen colbert's interview with jerry miller. mr. miller was the 200th person exonerated by the group mr. colbert calls "the murder huggers" at the innocence project.

the project put together a special report to commemorate their first 200 exonerations. among the summary statistics:

• they served an average of 12.5 years in prison
• 88 percent were convicted of sexual assault and 28 percent were convicted of murder
• 77 percent were convicted, at least in part, on eyewitness identification
• 62 percent were african american
• 60 percent had spent at least a third of their life in prison or on parole when exonerated
• 45 percent have been compensated financially for their wrongful convictions
• and, in a classic catch-22, many were denied parole because they refused to accept responsibility for crimes they did not commit

for related resources, you might check out the project's youtube page for some good first-person accounts and the center on wrongful convictions at northwestern law.

*the exoneration total has now climbed to 205.

army suicide rate

the record-high army suicide rate in 2006 is making big news today. how does the army rate of 17 per 100,000 compare with other groups of (mostly) young adults? suicide rates vary significantly by demographic group, with older white males most likely to kill themselves. let's see, the active-duty army is about 86 percent male and 61 percent white. the jail population is about 87 percent male and 44 percent white, while the prison population is about 93 percent male and 35 percent white. i've plotted the suicide rates for each group for the most recent year available. army rates are currently at about the level of prison suicide rates, though both are far lower than jail rates. while the trend in prison and jail suicide is declining, however, army rates appear to be ascending rapidly.

prison as a sabbatical for CEOs

i'm not sure what to think about this article from conde nast's portfolio.com. it basically offers a list of 10 recommendations for CEOs about to enter prison. at first i thought it might be a joke or at least meant to be read sarcastically, but given the authors' affiliations, i don't know...

any thoughts?

provided as a public service by the st. paul pioneer press

the st. paul pioneer press has developed a free searchable database for all ramsey county jail bookings. one can quickly and easily search by person, by date, or by offense category. it takes just a few seconds to pull up the full names and birth dates for, say, the 359 people booked for "no proof of insurance misdemeanors" or the 3 robert williams' arrested since january 1, 2007.

as a ramsey county resident, i've gotta admit that i'll be tempted to use these data. i could easily run a search of the older dudes playing in tor's bands and i'd certainly want to check out esperanza's future suitors. as a sociological criminologist, however, this sort of thing makes me very nervous. here's a bit of background on the site and the potential problems it raises.

the description:

This is a database of individuals who were arrested and booked into the Ramsey County Jail since Jan. 1, 2007. The data, obtained from the Ramsey County Jail, is updated Monday through Friday. You can search the data by either a person's name, a type of violation or the date of arrest.

the disclaimers:

Individuals might be listed more than one time on the same date if they have multiple charges against them. Being listed here does not mean they have been charged in court with this offense.... Not all violations are listed here. In addition, inconsistencies in how the information is entered into the database may result in some arrests not be[ing] displayed.

the difficulties:

while data on arrests and bookings are generally considered public information, i'm surprised the pi-press and the jail took it upon themselves to publicize this information. aside from the dubious quality of arrest data in most jurisdictions, many of these folks will never even be charged with crimes, much less convicted.

for example, the gentleman in the photo above was arrested and booked many times -- for trespassing, loitering, disorderly conduct, traffic offenses, parading without a permit, and other heinous crimes. how do you think prospective landlords or employers will respond when such a long record fills their computer screens? most men in cities, myself included, have been arrested at some point. would the minnversity have hired me if someone in HR stumbled on my (juvenile) arrest record in an online search? and don't think you have to live in st. paul to be arrested there. those campus kids planning protests of the 2008 republican national convention, for example, have a fightin' chance of landing in this database as well.

nevertheless, my main problem with the search engine is that it stops with arrest. those landlords and employers would need to do a lot of due diligence to determine whether those arrests ever went anywhere. they won't do it and i can hardly blame them, because the quick search gives them the only screen they think they'd ever need.

second chance act(s)

people have been asking me lately about the status of the "second chance act" for ex-felons. i confess to a bit of confusion. as i understand it, however, there are currently two "second chance acts" before congress.

representative danny davis' (d-il) "second chance act of 2007" (hr 1593) would reauthorize the grant program for reentry of offenders into the community in the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, to improve reentry planning and implementation, and for other purposes. this bill would provide funds for reentry programming and research.

representative charles rangel's (d-ny) "second second chance act" (hr 623) would permit expungement of records of certain nonviolent criminal offenses. expungement is a simple idea, but it has been extremely time- and resource-intensive in practice. hr 623 would make it easier for non-violent first offenders who have served their time to clear their names without expensive legal assistance. expungement would reinstate civil rights, expanding opportunities for housing, education, employment and voting.

i'm interested in both second chance acts as a citizen and as a researcher. what are their chances?

conjugal visits and civil rights law

conjugal visits for prisoners have long been suggested as a means to preserve family bonds (with those on the outside) while providing an additional incentive for decent behavior (with those on the inside). i've yet to see a methodologically bulletproof test of their effects, but i'd characterize the research evidence on these questions as "spotty." in this area, as in others, we could use some randomized trials.

nevertheless, i'm definitely taken with the idea of prisoners earning private time with their loved ones, particularly in the weeks and months preceding release. unfortunately, such programs are rare today. in light of prison overcrowding, budget pressures, and concerns about visitors bringing s.t.d.s and contraband into prisons, only a handful of states operate conjugal visit programs today.

where such visits are offered, however, there appears to be a move to extend them beyond heterosexual marital relationships. california recently became the first state to establish overnight conjugal visits for same-sex partners. just this week, institutions in mexico city adopted a similar policy. in california, visits are only permitted for registered domestic partners who are not themselves in custody, and the domestic partnership must have been established before admission to prison. moreover, such visits are not permitted for sex offenders, condemned inmates, or those without a parole date. those with violent offenses against a minor or a family member are also ineligible.

even with such restrictions, the program helps some inmates reconnect with an important source of outside support -- and sometimes their only source of outside support. msnbc quoted one california inmate as follows:

"I got to spend 2 1/2 days one-on-one with my partner, my best friend, my confidant, my life partner. It wasn't about the sex ... You can actually just relax and get to know your partner again."

as a reentry, reintegration, and recidivism-reduction strategy, that's probably not a bad use of a weekend.

gangs in the military

cbs news ran reports this week on gangs in the military and gangs employing military training in their criminal activities. the juxtaposition of military and street gang iconography, as in this picture of marine corporal shavon striggles at parris island, raises all sorts of disturbing and provocative questions.

in discussing gangs in the military, most will look immediately to the 125,000 recent recruits entering the service with criminal records. in making this leap, i'd suggest two cautions:

first, many of these recruits surely had some history of gang involvement, but just as surely had left ganglife behind. the best longitudinal data i've seen suggests that gang affiliations are rarely the lifelong commitments suggested in popular culture. relative to other former gang members, those that enter intensive military training might be expected to shed such affiliations especially quickly.

second, while one needn't look far to find evocative images such as gang graffiti and hand signs around military personnel, the official gang incident numbers remain quite small: 16 reports of investigation (ROI) and 44 other suspected gang incidents in 2006. in short, though i'm glad the military is vigilant on this issue, the rest of us would probably do well to keep such threats in perspective.

the venerable southern death belt: prison mortality, 2001-2005

while prison is a bad place to live, it is an even worse place to die. if you spend much time talking with inmates, it won't be long before you hear the phrase, "i don't want to die in prison." long sentences and an aging inmate population, however, suggest that rates of prison death are likely to rise in coming years. of course, the vast majority of inmates will ultimately be released to their communities. nevertheless, the specter of dying behind bars is likely becoming more realistic.

if you want to learn more about this phenomenon, the amazingly efficient professionals at the bureau of justice statistics have developed a useful new deaths in custody site. according to bjs, there were about 15,308 deaths in state prisons from 2001-2005, with illness listed as the cause in most (12,630) of them.

the prison mortality rate ranges from 126 per 100,000 prisoners in north dakota to 410 in louisiana. after looking at the state list, i was taken by the strong geographic patterning of prison mortality. in particular, midwestern states tend to have far lower prison mortality rates than southern states.

i'm not sure to what extent this pattern can be attributed to differentials in sentencing practices, health care, or the sociodemographic characteristics of inmates, but there is strong evidence for some sort of regionalization.

the map below is based on the interquartile range for the state mortality data, with the lowest quartile (fewer than 211 deaths per 100k) shaded yellow and the highest death quartile (more than 275 deaths per 100k) shaded red.

a contiguous line of states from pennsylvania to louisiana and back up to kansas has death rates in the top quartile, whereas a clump of states in the upper midwest all show far lower death rates. this map bears some resemblance to overall incarceration patterns -- with maine and north dakota anchoring one end of the distribution and louisiana the other.

note that these statistics do not consider executions. had these been added to the prison death numbers, there would be even stronger evidence of a southern death belt. or, more positively, of a life belt elsewhere. only twelve states are without a death penalty on the books, but eight of these (north dakota, iowa, rhode island, hawaii, minnesota, alaska, wisconsin, and maine) fall into the lowest quartile for prison death rates. of the six states with the lowest prison death rate, none have a death penalty.

the above pattern of results suggests to me that executions and life sentences are complements rather than substitutes. states that categorically refuse to kill prisoners are less likely, rather than more likely, to let them die in prison.

writing from prison

from realcostofprisons.org/writing:

"The Right to Vote for Convicted Felons" By David Hinman, #0025374, Anamosa State Penitentiary, Post Office Box 10, Anamosa, Iowa 52205-0010. Also see Whittling Away the Time, an article about a wood carving of Anamosa State Penitentiary.
"Justice Works! When its principles are not compromised", A Letter to the Governor by Michael Braae, 270679 W.C.C. AT 105 IMU P.O. Box 900 Shelton, WA 98584
"Indemnification of Prison Guards" By DJ Taylor, #179983 Northern Supermax, P.O. Box 665, Somers, CT 06071.
Letter from Kenneth Keel: Challenging "Three Strikes" Under Human Rights Treaty: International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and Concerned USA Citizen's Support To End Life Imprisonment of Nonviolent Offenders Under California's 'Three Strikes' Law, February, 2007
Letter from F. DeAndre Howard, February, 2007. Contact the author at Reg. #07757-089, Federal Correctional Institution, P.O. Box 5000, Pekin, IL 61555-5000
"Comprehensive Incarcerated Person Reform, Rehabilitation and Reentry Act" and Letter. Please feel free to contact the author with your thoughts and comments: Sheldon N. Messer 00A3204, Sing Sing Correctional Facility, 354 Hunter Street, Ossining, New York 10562
"Anatomy of a Prison Riot" by R.M., November 2006
"Waiting to Die - The American Prison Experience" by R. M., November 2006
"A Call for the Abolition of Prisons" by Tiyo Attallah Salah El
"Prisoner Suicides: The Danger of Manufacturing Hopelessness" by Ed Bowser

from the PEN prison writing program:

Doing Time by Steven Bulleit First Prize, Poetry
Sunday evening Mom and Dad unwind on the couch,/ her full black hair lays against Dad’s shoulder./The iconic stopwatch fills the screen, the second hand/sweeps north, folding its final ticks into silence. [More]
"Feeling(s) Cheated" by J.E. Wantz First Prize, Nonfiction/Essay
From 1995 to 2005 I was on Paxil, a medication that, ostensibly, was to help me in the areas of depression and obsessive compulsive thinking. As I look back on the role that this medication has played in my life for the last 10 years I begin to wonder. [More]
Just Another Death by Christina MacNaughton First Place, Memoir
I sit on my bunk as the minutes tick by. The count should have cleared over half an hour ago. Something’s up. In a place where timing and routine and schedule are the axis upon which the world revolves, remaining locked for so long past the standard count time sends Morse code through the heart of every inmate. [More]
"Confessions of a Jack-Off Artist" by Clifford Barnes First Prize, Fiction
I like cocaine. No, I love it. It can be pure or stepped on with Inositol, B.C. Powder, or Equal. I’ll cook it up, draw it into the rig, and shoot it. I love bumpin’ coke because I get a feeling like when I was twelve and skeeted for the first time, except the rush is ten-times more intense and lasts about fifteen to twenty minutes.[More]

after the offense

american public media's the story offers an extensive profile of local guy tom coles and the sex offenders he has invited into his home. heather h. tipped me off to after the offense, a story about swimming upstream against stigma and a man's enduring belief in redemption.

i'd probably edit the hour-long segment for classroom use, but i could imagine using it in concert with a sex offender recidivism study and a classroom discussion of politics and policy choices.

california prison overcrowding

in response to lawsuits documenting inadequate services for physical and mental health in california prisons, federal judges have ordered creation of a three-judge panel, charged with reducing overcrowding in that state. i'm guessing that the three judges won't be operating out of the triple-bunk setup shown at left, in vacaville's solano prison gymnasium.

according to bjs sources, california is now home to 175,000 state prisoners, far more than any other state and only about 15,000 inmates fewer than the entire federal system. that said, the state's incarceration rate of 476 per 100,000 is still below the national average of 497. nevertheless, the system is expanding rapidly, growing by 8,583 inmates from midyear 2005 to midyear 2006. moreover, california has a higher than average rate of parolees and it returns these parolees to prison at a much higher than average rate, often for technical violations. though governor schwarzenegger just signed a $7.7 billion prison construction bill, it will be tough (and, some say, impossible) for the state to build its way out of these problems.

you shoulda heard those knocked-out jailbirds sing

in this clip, inmates of the provincial detention and rehabilitation center in cebu, philippines challenge three beliefs held by many criminologists:

1. that criminals have little capacity for organized action.

2. that people on the inside are fundamentally and constitutionally different from people on the outside.

3. that the king's jailhouse rock video is not a faithful representation of contemporary prison life.

(moral) panic in needle park

this is the story of a short-lived moral panic and the challenges of leadership positions in law enforcement. earlier this month, the police chief in the peaceful college town of northfield, minnesota, called a press conference to alert the media to an emerging heroin epidemic.

according to media accounts, he estimated that up to 250 heroin users in and around northfield high were feeding habits of up to $800 per day -- and that this group was responsible for a major spike in the local crime rate.

some were called to action, others scoffed, and some of us just scratched our heads. i never doubted that some kids in northfield had tried heroin, but the claims seemed overblown. since 1999, heroin use has declined significantly among high school students. according to the 2006 monitoring the future data, only about 1.4 percent of 12th graders had even tried the drug and only .8 percent had ever done so intravenously.

yes, heroin can be found an hour north in minneapolis and, i suppose, the drug may have found its way to some carleton or st. olaf dorm room, but $800 per day? that's a mother-superior-sized habit. also, the picture painted at the meeting -- of the town's high-achieving valedictorians stealing everything that wasn't nailed down -- just smacked of hyperbole. frankly, in the absence of some corroborating evidence from schools, hospitals, or treatment centers, such claims called to mind reefer madness or, worse, j. peterman.*

now, just a couple weeks later, the good people of northfield and the town's feral youth have questioned the chief's evidence and his claims. and the chief, in turn, has taken an indefinite leave of absence. i don't write to ridicule the chief, because i don't doubt his motives. this didn't strike me as a cynical search for a scapegoat to explain the rise in property crime; nor did it strike me as intentionally hyping a story to garner resources for the department. i just think the chief saw a problem and reacted strongly. who knows? he might be proven right after all. at least the town is having better-informed drug policy discussions.

in my view, this case illustrates the value of asking "where's your data?" before taking big policy steps regarding crime and drug use. as soon as the evidentiary base was examined in northfield, the system seemed to self-correct and the moral panic was averted.

*That's right Elaine. white lotus, yam-yam, shanghai sally...I too once fell under the spell of opium. It was 1979. I was travelling the Yangtzee in search of a Mongolian horsehair vest...

incarcerex

here's a clever criminology riff on pharmaceutical ads.

sentencing project report on racial disparity

updated: 7/19

the sentencing project sent word today of their new report, Uneven Justice: State Rates of Incarceration By Race and Ethnicity. taking data from their tables, i graphed the state ratios of black-to-white incarceration shown below (note: this figure was revised 9/19 to correct a mislabeled state):

the disparity seems to be lowest in hawaii, though -- let's be clear about this -- a ratio of 1.9 still means that african americans are almost twice as likely as whites to be incarcerated in that state. southern states also have relatively low disproportionality ratios, partly due to their higher-than-average incarceration of whites. things are most disparate in iowa, vermont, new jersey, connecticut, wisconsin, and the dakotas, with african americans getting locked up at a rate 10 times that of whites. there is no state in which african american incarceration rates are anywhere near parity with white rates.

the report also computes ratios for hispanics versus non-hispanic whites, though i suspect that data quality varies considerably among the states on this indicator. nevertheless, i graphed these data as well:


comparing the two charts, the first thing i notice is the difference in scale on the y-axes: from 1.9 to 19 for the african american-to-white chart and from .4 to 6.6 on the hispanic-to-white chart. only connecticut, massachusetts, and pennsylvania had hispanic-to-white ratios of greater than 5. moreover, two states reached parity -- a ratio of 1.0 -- and five states had ratios indicating lower incarceration among hispanics than among non-hispanic whites: georgia, alaska, florida, arkansas, west virginia, louisiana, and hawaii. again, such ratios should probably be interpreted with a bit more caution than those presented in the first figure, since ethnicity is inconsistently reported in the criminal justice system.

the state-to-state differences are instructive and sobering, especially for northerners who might be smug or complacent about racial inequality. criminal punishment represents one area in which racial disparity appears far worse in the north than in the south, with mostly-white states such as connecticut leading the way in racial inequality. still, the overall disparities remain the big story: nationally, african american incarceration rates are 5.6 times as high as white rates, while hispanic rates are 1.8 times those of non-hispanic whites.

will you visit me on sunday?

listening to sirius 63 on a roadtrip, i learned that loretta lynn is re-releasing this classic prison song. the original was a fine duet with conway twitty, but the new version features a strong marty stuart performance. she's singing here with teddy wilburn, who is neither conway twitty nor marty stuart. the sentiment is pretty hoky, but i love how this love song humanizes the prison experience -- there, but for the grace of god...