Persistence in incarcerations: global comparative evidence

Date11 June 2018
Pages136-147
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/JCRPP-11-2017-0037
Published date11 June 2018
AuthorSimplice Asongu
Subject MatterHealth & social care,Criminology & forensic psychology
Persistence in incarcerations: global
comparative evidence
Simplice Asongu
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess how incarcerations persist across the world. The focus is
on 163 countries for the period 2010-2015.
Design/methodology/approach The empirical evidence is based on generalized method of moments.
In order to increase room for policy implications, the data set is decomposed into sub-samples based on
income levels, religious domination, openness to the sea, regional proximity and legal origins.
Findings The following main findings are established. Incarcerations are more persistent in low income,
Christian-protestant and Latin American countries while comparative evidence is not feasible on the basis of
landlockedness and legal origins owing to unfavorable post-estimation diagnostic tests. Justifications for the
comparative advantages and relevance of findings to theory building in public economics are discussed.
Practical implications First, income levels matter in the persistence of incarcerations because
low-income nations vis-à-vis their high-income counterparts have less financial resources with which to
prevent and deal with events like terrorism, political instability and violence that lead to incarcerations.
Second, the intuition for religious domination builds on the fact that liberal societies can be more associated
with incarcerations compared to conservative societies. The main theoretical contribution of this study to the
literature is that the authors have built on empirical validity to provide theoretical justification as to why
categorizing countries on the basis of selected fundamental characteristics determine cross-country
variations in incarcerations. Such evidence is important for theory building in public economics.
Originality/value It is important for policy makers to understand the persistence of incarcerations across
nations because resources could be allocated to regions and countries, contingent on the relative
importance of future incarceration tendencies.
Keywords Policing, Offenders, Management
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
The purposeof this study is to assess how incarcerationspersist across the world. The positioning
of the inquiry builds on two main trends in academic and policy circles, notably: the relevance of
understanding drivers of incarcerations and gaps in the literature. The points are engaged in
chronological order.
First, thereare growing levels of incarcerations across theworld on the one hand and on the other
hand, increasing levels of government expenditure allocated to the funding of the underlying
incarcerations. According to the Global Peace Index (2016), over the past decades, whereas
societal security and safety have been increasing, there has also been a substantial increase in
governmentexpenditure usedto control and prevent violence, notably:incarcerations and policing.
To put thispoint into perspective,the GPI report of 2015 maintainsthat more than 13percent of the
global gross domestic product (GDP) is allocated to the prevention and fighting of violence
(Anderson,2015). Accordingly, aboutUSD14.3 trillion (representing approximately 13.4 percentof
global GDP)was devoted to this cause. The underlyingcost is equivalent to the totalannual output
of Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Spain and the UK (Asongu and Kodila-Tedika, 2017).
Second, the extant literature has failed to engage the persistence of incarcerations. The contemporary
literature has fundamentally focused on inter alia: risk assessment in sentencing decisions as a
Received 15 November 2017
Revised 7 January 2018
Accepted 7 January 2018
The author is indebted to the
editor and reviewers for
constructive comments.
Dr Simplice Asongu is based at
the University of Cape Town,
Cape Town, South Africa.
PAGE136
j
JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGICAL RESEARCH, POLICY AND PRACTICE
j
VOL. 4 NO. 2 2018, pp.136-147, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 2056-3841 DOI 10.1108/JCRPP-11-2017-0037

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