Strategic Retreat or Mobilization? Racialized Political Behavior in U.S. Jails and Prisons

• In Event: 21059 - New Directions in Prison and Carceral Studies

Abstract

Scholarship on the political consequences of criminalization often finds a relationship between carceral contact and retreat from political life. Yet little work to date examines political socialization within prison—most investigations into the political effect of incarceration focus on reentry after pretrial detention or a prison sentence. This study offers a novel perspective by analyzing survey data gathered in 2020 and 2024 from nearly 50,000 individuals incarcerated across hundreds of U.S. jails and prisons. We find evidence of widespread mobilization across several measures of political attitudes and behavior, and higher engagement was most concentrated among Black prisoners incarcerated for longer periods. These findings complicate the prevailing view that incarceration has a demobilizing effect, particularly for Black people. Rather, our findings suggest that incarceration, itself an adverse life event, generally correlates with increasing levels of mobilization over time, even when controlling for factors such as age, education, and past political activity. The durable and substantial mobilization effects observed among Black respondents encourage a rethinking of the interplay between race and politics in the carceral age. Furthermore, our study highlights the importance of large-scale data collection on lived experiences within U.S. penal institutions, which may, in fact, foster political engagement.

Authors

• David Jonathan Knight, Yale University

• Jonathan Ben-Menachem, Columbia University