From the Asylum to the Prison: Rethinking the Incarceration Revolution
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University of Chicago Law School Chicago Unbound Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics Economics 2007 From the Asylum to the Prison: Rethinking the Incarceration Revolution. Part II: State Level Analysis Bernard E. Harcourt Follow this and additional works at: https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/law_and_economics Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Bernard E. Harcourt, "From the Asylum to the Prison: Rethinking the Incarceration Revolution. Part II: State Level Analysis" (John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics Working Paper No. 335, 2007). This Working Paper is brought to you for free and open access by the Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics at Chicago Unbound. It has been accepted for inclusion in Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics by an authorized administrator of Chicago Unbound. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CHICAGO JOHN M. OLIN LAW & ECONOMICS WORKING PAPER NO. 335 (2D SERIES) From the Asylum to the Prison: Rethinking the Incarceration Revolution Part II: State Level Analysis Bernard E. Harcourt THE LAW SCHOOL THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO March 2007 This paper can be downloaded without charge at: The Chicago Working Paper Series Index: http://www.law.uchicago.edu/Lawecon/index.html and at the Social Science Research Network Electronic Paper Collection: http://ssrn.com/abstract_id=970341 From the Asylum to the Prison: Rethinking the Incarceration Revolution Part II: State Level Analysis Bernard E. Harcourt Julius Kreeger Professor of Law and Criminology University of Chicago March 1, 2007 Paper Prepared for Presentation at the Criminal Justice Roundtable Yale Law School April 12, 2007 3/1/07 From the Asylum to the Prison II: State Analysis 1 From the Prison to the Asylum: Part II: State Level Analysis Bernard E. Harcourt Abstract The United States exhibited wildly erratic behavior regarding the institutionalization of persons deemed deviant during the 20th century. During the first half of the century, the country institutionalized deviants in mental hospitals and asylums at extraordinarily high rates even by modern carceral standards, with peaks of about 634 and 627 persons per 100,000 adults in 1948 and 1955 respectively. Deinstitutionalization brought a radical diminution of that population, but it coincided with a sharp increase in our prison populations, which reached 600 inmates in state and federal prisons per 100,000 adults in 2000. In previous research, I analyzed these trends at the national level and explored their relationship to homicide rates in the United States. Using a Prais-Winsten regression model, I found a significant statistical relationship between the rate of aggregated institutionalization (asylums and prisons) and homicide over the period 1928 to 2000, holding constant three leading covariates of homicide (youth demographics, poverty, and unemployment). The analysis was based on national-level data and, naturally, raised the question whether the results were the product of an ecological or other error of aggregation. One key question that emerged from the previous study was whether the findings would hold at the state level. This study collects and tests state-level data and finds that, indeed, the correlations remain strong and robust using state-level panel data regressions, as well as focusing individually on the states. The study reaches the following three conclusions. First, at the national level, using the new, expanded data on mental institutions (including all institutions for those deemed mentally ill), the contrast between the mid- century and 2001 is even more pronounced: during the 1940s and 50s, the United States consistently institutionalized in mental hospitals and prisons at rates above 700 persons per 100,000 adults, reaching peaks of 778 in 1939 and 786 in 1955. The relationship between the expanded aggregated institutionalization and homicide rates over the period 1934 to 2000 is statistically significant at the national level, holding constant three leading correlates of homicide. 3/1/07 Bernard E. Harcourt 2 Second, the very same relationship exists at the state level. Using state-level panel data regressions spanning the entire period from 1934 to 2001, including all 50 states, and controlling for economic, demographic, and criminal justice variables, I find a large, robust, and statistically significant relationship between aggregated institutionalization and homicide rates. The predicted relationship is not linear, but involves some slight elasticity. The findings are not sensitive to weighting by population and hold under a number of permutations, including when I aggregate jail populations as well. Third, as the panel data suggest, there are important relations when I analyze individual states. Using a Prais-Winsten regression model, the individual state analyses reveal some differences and nuance, but the overall direction of influence among the individual states shows the same striking relationship between aggregated institutionalization and homicide. I conclude from the analyses that the earlier national-level findings are not the product of an ecological fallacy or some other artifact of aggregating different state processes. They reflect a genuine and striking relationship at the state level. Naturally, the findings raise more questions than they answer. But they represent an important first step in formulating the right questions. 3/1/07 From the Asylum to the Prison II: State Analysis 3 From the Prison to the Asylum Part II: State Level Analysis Bernard E. Harcourt1 Introduction The United States exhibited wildly erratic behavior regarding the confinement of persons deemed deviant during the twentieth century. The early period—from the 1920s through the 1950s—was marked by remarkable stability in both prison and mental hospital populations, and by sharply higher rates of institutionalization in mental hospitals and asylums. At mid-century, the United States institutionalized persons in mental hospitals at extraordinarily high rates, with peaks of about 634 and 627 persons per 100,000 adults in 1948 and 1955 respectively. The 1970s marked a transition period: prison populations began to rise, while the mental health populations plummeted dramatically. During the 1980s, 1990s and into the twenty-first century, mental health populations dwindled to negligible levels, while state and federal prison population exploded, rising exponentially to their present levels. In a previous study, From the Asylum to the Prison: Rethinking the Incarceration Revolution,2 I analyzed these trends using national-level data and found, first, that although our current rates of imprisonment in state and federal prisons are high, the level of total institutionalization (in asylums and prisons) was higher during the 1940s and 50s. It is well known that prison populations skyrocketed nationwide beginning in 1970, rising from under 200,000 persons to more than 1.3 million in 2002. That year, our prison rate exceeded for the first time the 600 mark (600 inmates per 100,000 adults)—by far the highest rate of incarceration in the world.3 What the national-level data reveal though— and what was far less well known—is that the United States as a whole institutionalized people at even higher rates in the 1940s and ’50s. When the data on state and county 1 Julius Kreeger Professor of Law and Criminology, University of Chicago. I am deeply grateful to Stephen Schacht at NORC, Tracey Meares, and Tom Miles for comments and guidance. Special thanks to Zac Callen, Marylynne Hunt-Dorta, Sam Lim, and Dan Montgomery for excellent research assistance, and to Sam Lim for outstanding data entry regarding the mental hospitalization data. 2 This study was presented at the Symposium on Punishment Law and Policy at the University of Texas— Austin, and is published in the Texas Law Review, Volume 84(7), at pages 1751—1786 (2006). 3 I discuss this in The Mentally Ill, Behind Bars, in the New York Times, January 15, 2007, at A19. Incidentally, I am using the rate per 100,000 adults here, not per 100,000 persons. 3/1/07 Bernard E. Harcourt 4 mental hospitalization rates are combined with the data on prison rates for 1928 through 2000, the imprisonment revolution of the late 20th century is only now beginning to reach the level of institutionalization that we experienced at mid-century. The second major finding addressed the relationship between aggregated institutionalization and the national homicide rate. Using a Prais-Winsten regression model to correct for autocorrelation in the time-series data, I found a large, robust, and statistically significant relationship between aggregated institutionalization and homicide rates, holding constant three leading structural covariates of homicide (youth demographics, unemployment, and poverty). The level of aggregated institutionalization, in turns out, correlates highly with the national homicide rate over a lengthy period. I concluded from the previous study that, as a practical matter, empirical research that uses confinement as a value of interest should use an aggregated institutionalization rate that incorporates mental hospitalization, rather than simply an imprisonment measure.4 These findings were based on national-level data, and the natural question that arose is whether the relationship between institutionalization and homicide holds at the state level. There is a significant risk that a single-jurisdiction analysis may mask very difference