Shackled to the scarlet letter: The legacy of historical redlining on contemporary rates of incarceration

Abstract Much research has been dedicated to uncovering the contemporary ramifications of historic redlining—a housing segregation practice from the 1930s—particularly regarding disparities related to race, economics, health outcomes, urban planning, and crime. Given the intrinsic racialized nature of both historical restrictive housing practices and contemporary criminal legal sanctioning, it stands to reason that these processes are related; however, the relationship between historic redlining and contemporary criminal legal outcomes has yet to be examined. The current study fills this gap by drawing on theoretical expectations of social disorganization theory and racial threat theory to examine the association between historic redlining and contemporary incarceration rates using data from four sources: 1) Historic Redlining Scores for 2010 and 2020 U.S. Census Tracts; 2) Prison Policy Initiative; 3) the American Community Survey; and 4) the Uniform Crime Report. Results indicate a positive association between redlining and incarceration, such that census tracts with worse historic redlining scores experience higher contemporary incarceration rates, even when controlling for variables associated with social disorganization and the violent crime rate. These findings have important policy implications for community reinvestment strategies and decarceration efforts.