Crime and Punishment: The Weakening Bond Between Victimization and Jail Admissions in US Metropolitan areas, 1978-2014.

• In Event: The Big House Next Door: Exploring the Overuse of Pretrial Detention in Jails

Abstract

There’s an old criminological theorem about crime and punishment: not all crimes end in arrest; not all arrests end in punishment. And historically speaking, that’s true. But the crime drop and the rise of mass incarceration has changed things in the US. In 1993, there were half as many jail admissions (9.8 million, Census of Jails) as there were victimizations known to the police (18.3 million, NCVS). In 2014, jail admissions were more than 40 percent higher than the estimated 8.1 million victimizations known to police.

Using NCVS data for metropolitan areas and BJS jail population data, this paper models the shifting relationships between crime and punishment, between victimization and jail use over three decades, and how that varies across the United States. Where did the bond between victimization and jail use weaken the most? Over the last decades, did certain states or metropolitan areas manage to avoid the inversion of crime and punishment?

Author

• Jacob Kang-Brown, Vera Institute of Justice