A Generational Shift: Race and the Declining Lifetime Risk of Imprisonment

Abstract

Mass incarceration fundamentally altered the life course for a generation of American men, but sustained declines in imprisonment in recent years raise questions about how incarceration is shaping current generations. This study makes three primary contributions to a fuller understanding of the contemporary landscape of incarceration in the United States. First, we assess the scope of decarceration. Between 1999 and 2019, the Black male incarceration rate dropped by 44%, and notable declines in Black male imprisonment were evident in all 50 states. Second, our life table analysis demonstrates marked declines in the lifetime risks of incarceration. For Black men, the lifetime risk of incarceration declined by nearly half from 1999 to 2019. We estimate that less than 1 in 5 Black men born in 2001 will be imprisoned, compared with 1 in 3 for the 1981 birth cohort. Third, decarceration has shifted the institutional experiences of young adulthood. In 2009, young Black men were much more likely to experience imprisonment than college graduation. Ten years later, this trend had reversed, with Black men more likely to graduate college than go to prison. Our results suggest that prison has played a smaller role in the institutional landscape for the most recent generation compared with the generation exposed to the peak of mass incarceration.

Keywords: Incarceration; Inequality; Life course; Race and ethnicity.

Fig. 1

Incarceration rates per 100,000 adults in the United States, 1999–2019. Authors’ calculations are based on race-, ethnicity-, and gender-specific counts of individuals in state and federal prisons and race-, ethnicity-, and gender-specific estimates of the adult population.

Fig. 2

State declines in Black male incarceration rate relative to the state’s peak Black male incarceration rate, United States, 1990–2019. The dotted line represents the peak year. The decline percentage represents the percentage decline in the Black male incarceration rate from the peak year to 2019. Authors’ calculations are based on state-specific counts of Black males in state and federal prisons and state-specific population estimates for Black males.

Fig. 3

Histograms of state-level percentage change in the incarceration rate in the United States from 1999 to 2019. The dashed red line represents the mean percentage change across 50 states. Authors’ calculations are based on state-specific counts of individuals in state and federal prisons and state-specific population estimates.

Fig. 4

Age-specific incarceration rates for Black men in the United States, 1999–2019. Authors’ calculations are based on age-specific counts of Black males in state and federal prisons and age-specific population estimates for Black males.

Fig. 5

Real cohort risk of incarceration by age 25 in the United States, 2006–2019. Authors’ calculations are from multiple-decrement life tables for real cohort risks of incarceration in state or federal prison.

Fig. 6

Real and projected cumulative risk of incarceration for Black men in the United States, 1999–2019. Authors’ calculations are from multiple-decrement life tables for real and synthetic cohort risks of incarceration in state or federal prison. Solid lines are real cohort estimates of incarceration risk by age. Dashed lines represent estimates that required projections based on synthetic cohorts. For cohort–age combinations that reached the age before the end of the observation period (birth year + age ≤ 2019), the estimates shown here are real cohort estimates. For all other cohorts, we assume the 2019 incarceration rates would hold until the individuals reach age x. Thus, these estimates combine the real cohort estimates through 2019 and the projected synthetic cohort estimates for all years beyond 2019. For example, to estimate the risk of incarceration by age 50 for the 1999 cohort (born in 1981), we begin with our real cohort estimate by age 38 in 2019 and assume the 2019 incarceration rates held from age 39 until they reach age 50 in 2031. See Table A6 (online appendix) for more details.