NCJ Number
226751
Journal
Criminology Volume: 47 Issue: 1 Dated: February 2009 Pages: 209-238
Date Published
February 2009
Length
30 pages
Annotation
This study examined whether a relationship existed between African-American presence and racial disparities in imprisonments.
Abstract
Results were consistent with findings from other criminal justice outcomes. As expected, the findings show that racial contrasts in the arrest rates for both property and violent crimes accounted for part of these racial differences. The results also show that when especially threatening violent crime rates increased the public attributes to the African-American underclass increased, racial disparities in prison admission also grew. An inverted, U-shaped, nonlinear relationship was present between African-American presence and racial disparities in imprisonments. The results offer repeated support for partisan explanations for racial differences in prison admissions. The presence of African-Americans in deep Southern States and greater support for Republican presidential candidates together with increases in the most menacing crime helped to explain these discrepant racial prison admission rates. Perhaps today one of the most critical problems in the contemporary United States criminal justice system is the disproportionate incarceration of African-Americans. In an attempt to isolate the most powerful theoretically based explanations for these racial disparities and to account for the anomalous findings in prior studies, a two-way fixed-effects analysis was conducted to discover the social and political conditions that helped produce these important racial discrepancies. Tables, figures, and references