Skip to main content
Log in

The Growth, Scope, and Spatial Distribution of People With Felony Records in the United States, 1948–2010

Demography

Abstract

The steep rise in U.S. criminal punishment in recent decades has spurred scholarship on the collateral consequences of imprisonment for individuals, families, and communities. Several excellent studies have estimated the number of people who have been incarcerated and the collateral consequences they face, but far less is known about the size and scope of the total U.S. population with felony convictions beyond prison walls, including those who serve their sentences on probation or in jail. This article develops state-level estimates based on demographic life tables and extends previous national estimates of the number of people with felony convictions to 2010. We estimate that 3 % of the total U.S. adult population and 15 % of the African American adult male population has ever been to prison; people with felony convictions account for 8 % of all adults and 33 % of the African American adult male population. We discuss the far-reaching consequences of the spatial concentration and immense growth of these groups since 1980.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6

Notes

  1. The terms felon and prisoner refer to conviction and incarceration status rather than criminal behavior. These estimates are thus a reflection of a rising punishment rate, even as crime rates have declined (see, e.g., Uggen and McElrath 2013). Our estimates by race should not be interpreted as measures of differential rates of criminal behavior by race but rather as differential rates of punishment by race. Racial disparities in punishment rates result not merely from criminal behavior but also from discriminatory treatment within the criminal justice system, as others have shown (see, e.g., Western 2006).

  2. We do not present estimates for changes in Hispanic ethnicity because less historical demographic information is available on the ethnicity of people in prison or under felony supervision (for 2010 rates, see Shannon and Uggen 2013).

  3. Because we use de-identified aggregate data, factors such as aliases are unlikely to significantly affect our estimates. State releasee information is based on a simple count of the number of people leaving supervision, without regard to individual releasees’ names or identities. Our estimates thus model death and recidivism for the total release cohort rather than tracking individuals who may have multiple names or records within the system.

  4. A recent report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics using data on prisoners released in 2005 in 30 states found a 17.5 % reincarceration rate at 1 year, 28.8 % at 2 years, and 36.2 % at 3 years (Durose et al. 2014). We apply the slightly higher rate from previous studies so that our estimates are more conservative.

  5. Little is known about how mobility patterns of this population might differ from the population as a whole. Available evidence suggests that at least 95 % of former prison inmates remain in the same state postrelease (LaVigne and Kachnowski 2003; LaVigne and Mamalian 2003; LaVigne and Thomson 2003; Watson et al. 2004). Given that this population faces significant socioeconomic challenges as a result of criminal conviction (see, e.g., Wakefield and Uggen 2010), there is little reason to believe that people with felony records are more mobile than the general population. If they are less mobile than the population as a whole, our estimates will remain conservative.

  6. After calculating mobility-adjusted estimates for each state and year, we found that the resulting national totals for both populations were inflated by 2 % over national totals without mobility adjustments because we add in mobility gains each year and reduce those gains for recidivism and mortality but not subsequent mobility losses. To compensate for this inflation, we adjust each state’s estimate by a factor of 0.98 in each year. This is a reasonable assumption because 2 % to 3 % of the U.S. population moved from one state to another annually from 1980 to 2010, with the percentage declining just below 2 % in more recent years (U.S. Census Bureau 2013).

  7. Integral to this calculation is the specification of a spatial weights matrix in order to explicitly account for the spatial arrangement of the data. This specification determines the “neighborhood” for each observation. Weights matrices can be determined based on distance (e.g., from one state centroid to another) or by contiguity (shared borders). Contiguity matrices can be established at higher or lower orders (e.g., first, second, third) and vary in the neighbors included (e.g., rook, queen). For example, a first-order queen contiguity matrix takes into account adjacent neighbors in all directions at the first level out from the state in question.

  8. We also tested these results excluding states with especially high rates (e.g., California and Florida) as well as states with less than 10,000 African Americans in the total population; our findings were similar.

  9. We caution against a direct comparison between our article and Muller and Wildeman’s (2016) because of differences in methods and the outcome of interest. Muller and Wildeman (2016) used point-in-time projection, and our analysis uses release cohorts over a much longer period. As Muller and Wildeman (2016:1505) noted, these methodological differences hinder drawing direct comparisons between the two types of analyses. In addition, Muller and Wildeman estimated risk of incarceration only, whereas we estimate felony convictions with or without a sentence of incarceration.

References

  • Anselin, L. (1995). Local indicators of spatial autocorrelation–—LISA. Geographical Analysis, 27, 93–115.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barker, V. (2006). The politics of punishing: Building a state governance theory of American imprisonment variation. Punishment & Society, 8, 5–32.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beck, A. J., & Shipley, B. E. (1989). Recidivism of prisoners released in 1983 (Bureau of Justice Statistics special report). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beckett, K., Nyrop, K., & Pfingst, L. (2006). Race, drugs, and policing: Understanding disparities in drug delivery arrests. Criminology, 44, 105–137.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beckett, K., & Western, B. (2001). Governing social marginality: Welfare, incarceration, and the transformation of state policy. Punishment & Society, 3, 43–59.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Behrens, A., Uggen, C., & Manza, J. (2003). Ballot manipulation and the “menace of Negro domination”: Racial threat and felon disenfranchisement in the United States, 1850–2002. American Journal of Sociology, 109, 559–605.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bonczar, T. P. (2003). Prevalence of imprisonment in the U.S. population, 1974–2001 (Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report, No. NCJ 197976). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brame, R., Bushway, S. D., Paternoster, R., & Turner, M. G. (2014). Demographic patterns of cumulative arrest prevalence by ages 18 and 23. Crime & Delinquency, 60, 471–486.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brame, R., Turner, M. G., Paternoster, R., & Bushway, S. D. (2012). Cumulative prevalence of arrest from ages 8–23 in a national sample. Pediatrics, 129, 21–27.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bridges, G. S., & Steen, S. (1998). Racial disparities in official assessments of juvenile offenders: Attributional stereotypes as mediating mechanisms. American Sociological Review, 63, 554–570.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carson, E. A., & Golinelli, D. (2013). Prisoners in 2012 (Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin, No. NCJ 243920). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clear, T. R. (2007). Imprisoning communities. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

  • Clear, T. R., & Frost, N. A. (2014). The punishment imperative. New York, NY: NYU Press.

  • Cliff, A. D., & Ord, J. K. (1973). Spatial autocorrelation. London, UK: Pion.

  • Cressie, N. (1993). Statistics for spatial data. New York, NY: Wiley.

  • Durlauf, S. N., & Nagin, D. S. (2011). Overview of “Imprisonment and crime: Can both be reduced?” Criminology & Public Policy, 10, 9–12.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Durose, M. R., Cooper, A. D., & Snyder, H. N. (2014). Recidivism of prisoners released in 30 states in 2005: Patterns from 2005 to 2010 (Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report, No. NCJ 244205). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.

    Google Scholar 

  • Enns, P. K. (2016). Incarceration nation: How the United States became the most punitive democracy in the world. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

  • Ewald, A., & Uggen, C. (2012). The collateral effects of imprisonment on prisoners, their families, and communities. In J. Petersilia & K. Reitz (Eds.), The Oxford handbook on sentencing and corrections (pp. 83–103). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

  • Feeley, M., & Simon, J. (1992). The new penology: Notes on the emerging strategy of corrections and its implications. Criminology, 30, 449–474.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Franklin, R. S. (2003). Domestic migration across regions, divisions, and states: 1995 to 2000 (Census 2000 Special Reports, No. CENSR-7). Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau.

    Google Scholar 

  • Garland, D. (2001a). Mass imprisonment: Social causes and consequences. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Ltd..

  • Garland, D. (2001b). The culture of control: Crime and social order in contemporary society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

  • Glaze, L. E., & Bonczar, T. P. (2011). Probation and parole in the United States, 2010 (Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin No. NCJ 236019). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.

    Google Scholar 

  • Golash-Boza, T. M. (2015). Deported: Immigrant policing, disposable labor, and global capitalism. New York, NY: NYU Press.

  • Greenberg, D. F., & West, V. (2001). State prison populations and their growth, 1971–1991. Criminology, 39, 615–654.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guerino, P., Harrison, P. M., & Sabol, W. J. (2012). Prisoners in 2010 (Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin, No. NCJ 236096). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haining, R. (1990). Spatial data analysis in the social and environmental sciences. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

  • Hoffman, P. B., & Stone-Meierhoefer, B. (1980). Reporting recidivism rates: The criterion and follow-up issues. Journal of Criminal Justice, 8, 53–60.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jacobs, D., & Helms, R. (2001). Toward a political sociology of punishment: Politics and changes in the incarcerated population. Social Science Research, 30, 171–194.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, R. C., & Raphael, S. (2009). The effects of male incarceration dynamics on AIDS infection rates among African-American women and men. Journal of Law and Economics, 52, 251–293.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Justice Mapping Center. (2010). Justice atlas of sentencing and corrections [Data]. Retrieved from http://www.justiceatlas.org/

  • Kaeble, D., Glaze, L., Tsoutis, A., & Minton, T. (2015). Correctional populations in the United States, 2014 (Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin, No. NCJ 249513). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kaeble, D., Maruschak, L. M., & Bonczar, T. P. (2015). Probation and parole in the United States, 2014 (Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin, No. NCJ 249057). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kirk, D. S. (2008). The neighborhood context of racial and ethnic disparities in arrest. Demography, 45, 55–77.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lageson, S. E. (2016). Digital punishment’s tangled web. Contexts, 15(1), 22–27.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Langan, P. A., & Cunniff, M. A. (1992). Recidivism of felons on probation, 1986–89 (Bureau of Justice Statistics special report). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.

    Google Scholar 

  • Langan, P. A., & Levin, D. J. (2002). Recidivism of prisoners released in 1994 (Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report, No. NCJ 193427). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.

    Google Scholar 

  • LaVigne, N. G., & Kachnowski, V. (2003). A portrait of prisoner reentry in Maryland (Research report). Washington, DC: The Urban Institute.

    Google Scholar 

  • LaVigne, N. G., & Mamalian, C. A. (2003). A portrait of prisoner reentry in Illinois (Research report). Washington, DC: The Urban Institute.

    Google Scholar 

  • LaVigne, N. G., & Thomson, G. L. (2003). A portrait of prisoner reentry in Ohio (Research report). Washington, DC: The Urban Institute.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lynch, M. P. (2010). Sunbelt justice: Arizona and the transformation of American punishment. Stanford, CA: Stanford Law Books.

  • Maruschak, L. M., & Bonczar, T. P. (2013). Probation and parole in the United States, 2012 (Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin, No. NCJ 24842). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.

    Google Scholar 

  • Massoglia, M. (2008). Incarceration, health, and racial disparities in health. Law and Society Review, 42, 275–306.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mauer, M. (2013). Can we wait 88 years to end mass incarceration? Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marc-mauer/88-years-mass-incarceration_b_4474132.html

  • Muller, C., & Wildeman, C. (2016). Geographic variation in the cumulative risk of imprisonment and parental imprisonment in the United States. Demography, 53, 1499–1509.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • National Research Council. (2014). The growth of incarceration in the United States: Exploring causes and consequences. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Perry, M. J. (2006). Domestic net migration in the United States: 2000 to 2004 (Current Population Reports No. P25-1135). Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pettit, B. (2012). Invisible men. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

  • Pettit, B., & Western, B. (2004). Mass imprisonment and the life course: Race and class inequality in U.S. incarceration. American Sociological Review, 69, 151–169.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pew Center on the States. (2011). State of recidivism: The revolving door of America’s prisons (Public Safety Performance Project report). Washington, DC: Pew Charitable Trusts.

    Google Scholar 

  • Phelps, M. S. (2013). The paradox of probation: Community supervision in the age of mass incarceration. Law & Policy, 35, 51–80.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Phelps, M. S. (2017). Mass probation: Toward a more robust theory of state variation in punishment. Punishment & Society, 19, 53–73.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schnittker, J., & John, A. (2007). Enduring stigma: The long-term effects of incarceration on health. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 48, 115–130.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schnittker, J., Massoglia, M., & Uggen, C. (2011). Incarceration and the health of the African American community. Du Bois Review, 8, 133–141.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schnittker, J., Uggen, C., Shannon, S., & McElrath, S. (2015). The institutional effects of incarceration: Spillovers from criminal justice to health care. Milbank Quarterly, 93, 516–560.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shannon, S., & Uggen, C. (2013). Visualizing punishment. In D. Hartmann & C. Uggen (Eds.), Crime and the punished (pp. 42–62). New York, NY: W. W. Norton.

  • Steffensmeier, D., Ulmer, J., & Kramer, J. (1998). The interaction of race, gender, and age in criminal sentencing: The punishment cost of being young, black, and male. Criminology, 36, 763–798.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stucky, T. D., Heimer, K., & Lang, J. B. (2005). Partisan politics, electoral competition and imprisonment: An analysis of states over time. Criminology, 43, 211–248.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sykes, B., & Pettit, B. (2014). Mass incarceration, family complexity, and the reproduction of childhood disadvantage. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 654, 127–149.

  • Tonry, M. (1996). Malign neglect: Race, crime, and punishment in America. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

  • Tonry, M. (2004). Thinking about crime: Sense and sensibility in American penal culture. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

  • Travis, J. (2005). But they all come back: Facing the challenges of prisoner reentry. Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turney, K. (2014). Stress proliferation across generations? Examining the relationship between parental incarceration and childhood health. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 55, 302–319.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • U.S. Bureau of Prisons. (1948–2004). National prisoner statistics [Data set]. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.

    Google Scholar 

  • U.S. Bureau of the Census. (1953). U.S. census of population: 1950 (Vol. IV, Special Reports, Part 4, Chapter A, State of Birth). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

    Google Scholar 

  • U.S. Bureau of the Census. (1963). U.S. census of population: 1960. Subject Reports: State of Birth (Final Report PC(2)-2A). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

  • U.S. Bureau of the Census. (1973). Census of population: 1970 Subject Reports (Final Report PC(2)-5A). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

    Google Scholar 

  • U.S. Bureau of the Census. (1984). 1980 Census of Population (Vol. 2, Subject Reports). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce.

    Google Scholar 

  • U.S. Census Bureau. (2010). State and county level estimates with components of change, 2000 to 2009. Prepared by the University of Missouri Extension, Office of Social & Economic Data Analysis (OSEDA). Retrieved from http://mcdc.missouri.edu/data/popests/Reports/dmig_report_states.html

  • U.S. Census Bureau. (2013). Annual geographic mobility rates, by type of movement: 1948–2013 [Data set]. Retrieved from https://www.census.gov/topics/population/migration/data/tables.html

  • U.S. Department of Justice. (2015). Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.

    Google Scholar 

  • Uggen, C., & Manza, J. (2002). Democratic contraction? Political consequences of felon disenfranchisement in the United States. American Sociological Review, 67, 777–803.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Uggen, C., Manza, J., & Thompson, M. (2006). Citizenship, democracy, and the civic reintegration of criminal offenders. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 605, 281–310.

  • Uggen, C., & McElrath, S. (2013). Six social sources of the U.S. crime drop. In D. Hartmann & C. Uggen (Eds.), Crime and the punished (pp. 3–20). New York, NY: W. W. Norton.

  • Uggen, C., & Stewart, R. (2015). Piling on: Collateral consequences and community supervision. Minnesota Law Review, 99, 1971–1910.

    Google Scholar 

  • Uggen, C., Vuolo, M., Lageson, S., Ruhland, E., & Whitham, H. (2014). The edge of stigma: An experimental audit of the effects of low-level criminal records on employment. Criminology, 52, 627–654.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wacquant, L. (2012). The punitive regulation of poverty in the neoliberal era. Criminal Justice Matters, 89, 38–40.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wakefield, S., & Uggen, C. (2010). Incarceration and stratification. Annual Review of Sociology, 36, 387–406.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Watson, J., Solomon, A. L., LaVigne, N. G., & Travis, J. (2004). A portrait of prisoner reentry in Texas. Washington, DC: Urban Institute.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Western, B. (2006). Punishment and inequality in America. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

  • Western, B., & Beckett, K. (1999). How unregulated is the U.S. labor market? The penal system as a labor market institution. American Journal of Sociology, 104, 1030–1060.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wildeman, C. (2009). Parental imprisonment, the prison boom, and the concentration of childhood disadvantage. Demography, 46, 265–280.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Rochelle Schmidt, Maria Kamenska, and Suzy McElrath for invaluable research assistance and support.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sarah K. S. Shannon.

Electronic supplementary material

ESM 1

(PDF 483 kb)

ESM 2

(XLSX 26 kb)

ESM 3

(XLSX 231 kb)

ESM 4

(PDF 42 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Shannon, S.K.S., Uggen, C., Schnittker, J. et al. The Growth, Scope, and Spatial Distribution of People With Felony Records in the United States, 1948–2010. Demography 54, 1795–1818 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-017-0611-1

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-017-0611-1

Keywords

Navigation