The Political Economy of Imprisonment

Research showing an association between business cycles and imprisonment is suspect on both theoretical and empirical grounds. Most research on this topic uses an impoverished notion of business cycles andpays no attention to differences in the institutional contexts o f economic polic.vmaking. This article reexamines this issue using data from 15 afluent capitalist democracies observed over 30 years, from 1960 to 1990. Pooled regression techniques are used to test hypotheses regarding the effects of business cycles, political power, and the structure o f labor market institutions. Results from simple models show the expected associations between business cycles and imprisonment rates, but these associations disappear in models that include measures ofpolitics and institutional structure. This suggests that the business cycle-imprisonment relationship is not causal but is instead an artifact of antecedent differences between neoliberal and corporatist societies. 0 ver the last three decades, the busiest line societies is to manage surplus labor. Since the of empirical research on imprisonment 1970s, dozens of studies have tested the deriv-has treated incarceration rates as a function of ative hypothesis that the imprisonment rate macroeconomic trends. This research builds on moves inversely with the business cycle, rising during recession and declining during economic a Marxian theoretical foundation laid in the expansion. Most results confirm the expected 1930s by Rusche and Kirchheimer (Rusche association (Chiricos and DeLone 1992), and 1978; Rusche and Kirchheimer 1968), who many scholars believe the "Rusche-argued that the function of prisons in capitalist Kirchheimer hypothesis" (henceforward RK) is amply supported. Others are skeptical, arguing that tests of RK are based on narrow sam-should be interpreted. Scholars in the RK tra-drawn from the analysis reflect the viewpoint of the dition have suggested that recession may be author, and not NSF. Earlier versions of this paper linked to imprisonment rates as a result of were presented to the Sociology Department at increased crime (unemployed people steal), by Princeton University in November, 2000; at the meet-the legitimating function of the state (unem-ings of the American Sociological Association in ployed people make revolutions), or by the