Class and Incarceration

Class inequality in incarceration in the United States is vast, widening, and understudied. Despite multiple comprehensive reviews of the literature on incarceration and inequality, no reviews have been dedicated specifically to class and incarceration. We review the empirical evidence about class inequality in incarceration and the mechanisms that produce it, showing that the evidence base for the economic causes of crime and incarceration has strengthened in recent years. We then provide new estimates of class inequality in incarceration in the United States from 1940 to the present. American prisons and jails have long disproportionately housed the poor, but the extent of class inequality in incarceration has dramatically intensified in the past half-century. To adequately capture the relationship between incarceration and inequality in the United States today, scholars will need to devote more attention to class.