Changing Influence on the Growth of Prison Populations and Spending: the Example of Kentucky

• In Event: The Financial Cost of Imprisonment

Abstract

Between 1972 and 2008, state imprisonment rates grew to five and one-half times that of European Union member countries. State rates have decreased slightly but the trend is uneven: in 2011 populations increased in twenty-four states, with Kentucky recording the greatest rate increase. Explaining the prison boom as a necessary reaction to moral decline was replaced by the 1990s with assertions that growth is the consequence of strict governmental control of the marginalized social underclass through criminal justice policy decisions. Here we compare the relative influence of socioeconomic and political influences between the early and later periods of the prison boom.

Spelman’s (2009) national-level analysis of prison growth is notable for its inclusion of social threat, structural, and policy variables; coverage of most of the period of prison expansion; and thoughtful methodology. However, it does not account for differences in between States, or differences in the relative influence of independent variables at different times during the prison boom. We adapt Spelman’s approach to investigate Kentucky’s prison growth between 1997 and 2005. We compare the influence of eighteen variables, grouped by category and theoretical perspective, for the epoch of initial prison growth with that of the latter policy-driven years.

Authors

• James Masterson, Morehead State University

• Paul D. Steele, Morehead State University

• Daniel Jude, Morehead State University