The Hamilton Project • Brookings 17
(both prison and jail) by the U.S. resident population on
January 1 of the following year taken from Census Bureau
(2001). Estimates of the total incarcerated population come
from personal communication with E. Ann Carson, Bureau
of Justice Statistics, January 24, 2014. This quotient is then
multiplied by 100,000 in order to get the incarceration
rate per 100,000 residents. Incarceration rates for 2000 to
2006 come from Sabol, Couture, and Harrison (2007). The
incarceration rate for 2007 comes from Sabol, West, and
Cooper (2010). The incarceration rate for 2008 comes from
Glaze (2010). Incarceration rates for 2009 and 2010 come
from Glaze (2011). Incarceration rates for 2011 and 2012
come from Glaze and Herberman (2013).
Dates for the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 and the Anti-
Drug Abuse Act of 1986 come from Raphael and Stoll (2013).
The number of states that adopted or strengthened the “three
strikes” legislation between 1993 and 1997 come from Austin
and colleagues (2000). The three events highlighted in the
figure are examples of the many policy changes that are
believed to have influenced the incarceration rate since the
1980s.
6. The U.S. incarceration rate is more than six times
that of the typical OECD nation.
Figure 6. Incarceration Rates in OECD Countries
Sources: Glaze and Herberman 2013; Walmsley 2013; authors’
calculations.
Note: The typical Organisation for Economic Co-Operation
and Development (OECD) incarceration rate refers to the
median incarceration rate among all OECD nations. The
incarceration rate for the United States comes from Glaze
and Herberman (2013). Data for all other OECD nations
come from Walmsley (2013). All incarceration rates are
for 2013, with the exception of Canada, Greece, Israel,
the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United
States. Of these countries, all rates are for 2012, with the
exception of Canada, whose rate is from 2011 to 2012. The
incarceration rate for the United Kingdom is a weighted
average of the prison population rates of England and Wales,
Northern Ireland, and Scotland based on their estimated
national populations. The incarceration rate for France
includes metropolitan France and excludes departments and
territories in Africa, the Americas, and Oceania.
7. There is nearly a 70 percent chance that an African
American man without a high school diploma will be
imprisoned by his mid-thirties.
Figure 7. Cumulative Risk of Imprisonment by Age 30–34
for Men Born Between 1945–49 and 1975–79, by Race and
Education
Source: Western and Wildeman 2009.
Note: In this figure, imprisonment is defined as a sentence
of twelve months or longer for a felony conviction. The
cumulative risk of imprisonment for men is calculated
using life table methods, and requires age-specific first-
incarceration rates. Though this cumulative risk is
technically the likelihood of going to jail or prison by age
thirty to thirty-four, these estimates roughly describe
lifetime risks because most inmates enter prison for the first
time before age thirty-five. For more details, see Pettit and
Western (2004).
8. Per capita expenditures on corrections more than
tripled over the past thirty years.
Figure 8. Total Corrections Expenditures by Level of
Government and Per Capita Expenditures, 1980–2010
Sources: Bauer 2003a, 2003b; Census Bureau 2001, 2011,
2013; Gifford 2001; Hughes 2006, 2007; Hughes and Perry
2005; Perry 2005, 2008; Kyckelhahn 2012a, 2012b, 2012c;
Kyckelhahn and Martin 2013; authors’ calculations.
Note: Total corrections expenditures by type of government
come from the Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) annual
Justice Expenditures and Employment Extracts. Only direct
expenditures are included so as to not double count the
value of intergovernmental grants. Expenditure figures are
adjusted to 2010 dollars using the CPI-U-RS. Estimates of the
U.S. resident population are the Census Bureau’s population
estimates for July of that year. Per capita expenditures are then
calculated by dividing the total corrections expenditures by
the resident population in that year.
18 Ten Economic Facts about Crime and Incarceration in the United States
9. By their fourteenth birthday, African American
children whose fathers do not have a high school
diploma are more likely than not to see their fathers
incarcerated.
Figure 9. Cumulative Risk of Parent’s Imprisonment for
Children by Age 14, by Race and Parent’s Education
Source: Wildeman 2009.
Note: Children included in the figure were born in 1990.
The cumulative risk of parental imprisonment for children
by the time they turn fourteen is calculated using life table
methods, and relies on the number of children experiencing
parental imprisonment for the first time at any age. Original
analysis was performed using three data sets: the “Surveys
of Inmates of State and Federal Correctional Facilities,” the
year-end counts of prisoners, and the National Corrections
Reporting Program. For more details, see Wildeman (2009).
10. Juvenile incarceration can have lasting impacts on
a young person’s future.
Figure 10. Effect of Juvenile Incarceration on Likelihood of
High School Graduation and Adult Imprisonment
Source: Aizer and Doyle 2013.
Note: Bars show statistically significant regression estimates
(at the 5 percent significance level) of the causal effect of
juvenile incarceration on high school completion and on
adult recidivism. The sample includes all juveniles charged
with a crime and brought before juvenile court, though not
necessarily all were subsequently incarcerated. The analysis
includes a vector of community x weapons-offense x year-
of-offense fixed effects, uses randomly assigned judges as
an instrumental variable, and controls for demographic
characteristics as well as for court variables. The regression
results for homicide and drug crimes are not included in the
figure since they are statistically insignificant at the 5 percent
significance level. For more details, see Aizer and Doyle (2013).