The Impact of Segregation on African-American Incarceration Rates for Drug Offenses

• In Event: Perspectives on Workplace Crime, Pathways to Terrorism, Organized Religion and Deviance, and the Impact of Segregation on Drug Offenses

Abstract

Wacquant (2001) was one of the first to suggest that the dramatic increase in the African-American incarceration rate that occurred after the civil rights era was in part a reflection of the declining utility of residential segregation as a form of modern social control. While previous research has shown that low levels of residential segregation tend to be associated with higher public expenditures on the police, existing research has not adequately investigated the association between segregation and prison admission rates, particularly for crimes such as drug offenses. Consistent with the racial threat hypotheses, research using 2000 data reports African-American drug imprisonment rates were lower in counties where whites were more residentially segregated from blacks (Arvanites, 2014). Although segregation remains high in the U.S., it has declined over the past two decades (DeFina & Hannon, 2009). Using 2002 and 2010 data for 198 metropolitan counties, this research examines whether the association between segregation and African-American admission rates for drug offenses has changed over the past ten years.

Authors

• Thomas Arvanites, Villanova University

• Denise Wilson, Villanova University