The cumulative risk of jail incarceration in New York City is high for Black men living in poor neighborhoods, a study finds. Past research on incarceration has focused on imprisonment, even though more people are admitted to jails than to prisons. Jail detention is typically brief but can have a long-lasting impact on financial and family outcomes. Bruce Western and colleagues assessed how the cumulative risk of jail incarceration varies with race and poverty status. The authors analyzed data on jail admissions in New York City from 2008 to 2017. The results showed that around 27% of Black men and around 16% of Latino men were jailed by the age of 38 years, compared with 3% of White men. One-third of Black men and 19% of Latino men in the poorest neighborhoods were incarcerated in jails by the age of 38 years, compared with 22% and 14% in nonpoor neighborhoods, respectively. By contrast, the cumulative risk of jail incarceration did not vary by neighborhood poverty status for White men. According to the authors, the results suggest that jail incarceration has had a large negative impact on the life of disadvantaged individuals, even in a city with one of the lowest jail incarceration rates in the country.
Article #20-23429: "The cumulative risk of jail incarceration," by Bruce Western, Jaclyn Davis, Flavien Ganter, and Natalie Smith
MEDIA CONTACT: Bruce Western, Columbia University, New York, NY; email: bw2562@columbia.edu
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences