The demographic divide: Population dynamics, race and the rise of mass incarceration in the United States
| Published date | 01 January 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1462474517734166 |
| Date | 01 January 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
The demographic divide:
Population dynamics,
race and the rise of
mass incarceration in
the United States
Michael C Campbell
University of Missouri, USA
Matt Vogel
University of Missouri, USA and TU Delft, Netherlands
Abstract
This manuscript examines whether certain fundamental demo graphic changes in age
structures across racial groups might help explain incarceration rates in the United
States. We argue that a “demographic divide”—a growing divergence in the age struc-
tures of blacks and whites—was an important factor that contributed to the nation’s
rising incarceration rates. Where age disparities between blacks and whites were higher
ideological conservatism and religious fundamentalism increased, as did incarceration
rates. We contend that historical forces shape how groups respond to subsequent
social problems and proposed solutions to them and explore how “generational
effects” may shape law and policy. Specifically, we suggest that states with older
white and younger black populations created fertile conditions for a more punitive
brand of politics and penal policy. We analyze decennial state-level data from 1970
to 2010 and examine whether differences in the median ages of blacks and whites
contributed to changing incarceration rates within states over time. We situate our
findings within the broader scholarship that has engaged the complex links between
race, religion, political conservatism, and punishment. Our findings illustrate the impor-
tance of accounting for long-term shifts in social structure in understanding more
proximate changes in law and policy.
Corresponding author:
Michael C Campbell, 324 Lucas Hall, St. Louis, MO 63121, USA.
Email: campbellmi@umsl.edu
Punishment & Society
2019, Vol. 21(1) 47–69
!The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1462474517734166
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Keywords
age structure, incarceration, prison, punitiveness, race, religion
Introduction
Efforts to explain the sharp and prolonged increases in imprisonment in the United
States have generated a robust and thriving literature that has illuminated the com-
plex links between social conflicts, rising crime rates, economic shifts, political pro-
cesses, and the legal and policy changes that helped drive prison expansion (e.g.,
Alexander, 2010; Beckett, 1997; Garland, 2001; Gottschalk, 2014; Simon, 2007).
Historical research has helped demonstrate how these forces converged within spe-
cific state-level contexts to fuel increasingly aggressive and punitive responses to
crime that created nation’s carceral state (e.g., Barker, 2009; Campbell and
Schoenfeld, 2013; Lynch, 2010; Miller, 2008; Page, 2011). The incarceration boom
was not the product of any single factor but of a “uniquely American combination of
crime, race and politics that shaped the adoption of more punitive criminal justice
policies” (National Research Council, 2014: 104).
This article adds to this literature in two ways. First, it illuminates how some-
times overlooked shifts in the nation’s demographic structure shaped the political
terrains upon which battles over law and policy unfolded. Specifically, this paper
argues that a “demographic divide”—defined here as the rapid divergence of
African American and white age structures in the years following Second World
War—altered America’s social fabric. This divide fueled higher levels of Christian
fundamentalism and ideological conservatism, abetting the expansion of incarcer-
ation within states over the latter half of the 20th-century by exacerbating long-
standing racial divisions. Second, we argue that explanations of law and policy
would benefit from accounting for generational forces, or the ways in which his-
torical events condition how groups respond to social problems, and how these
processes are inherently stratified across age and race.
The demographic divide could help explain broader shifts in the social and
political underpinnings that helped give rise to mass incarceration. Explanations
of American penality stressing the importance of the nation’s political economy
(Gottschalk, 2014), inherent tensions in late-modern social structures and cultures
that produced more punitive norms (Garland, 2001), and political strategy and
racialized fear mongering (Alexander, 2010; Beckett, 1997; Simon, 2007), are
sometimes hard-pressed to account for the persistence of the “law and order”
movement’s successes and for the magnitude of the differences between the US
and other nations. As increasingly punitive political positions became the biparti-
san norm, crime’s political utility should have waned. Instead, punitive criminal
justice policies sustained a striking momentum that overwhelmed concerns about
effectiveness, cost, justice, and sustainability (Clear and Frost, 2013). Accounts
stressing the importance of America’s federalist structure and the legal and polit-
ical processes it generates provide useful insights into the ways institutions shape
48 Punishment & Society 21(1)
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