The Short- and Long-Term Impacts of COVID-19 on Prisons and Racial Inequalities in Imprisonment

• In Event: The New Reality of American Imprisonment

Abstract

This paper explores the short- and long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on prison exposure and racial inequalities in incarceration in the United States. First, I use an interrupted time series analysis to estimate the immediate causal effect of the pandemic on prison admission rates in 2020. Overall, the pandemic caused a 40% to 70% reduction in prison admissions rates in 2020. Nationally, the effect was larger for Black men compared to White men, which resulted in a 13% reduction in the Black-White disparity ratio in prison admission rates. Across states, the effect of COVID on prison admissions ranged from 6% to nearly 100%, with larger effects in states with higher infection rates on average. To assess the pandemic’s longer-term impact on the life course, I estimate the cumulative risk of incarceration for successive cohorts reaching adulthood before and during the pandemic. The risk of incarceration by age 20 declined by 41% for the pandemic cohort. Moreover, the Black-White risk difference at this age declined by 44%. Overall, the pandemic substantially reduced overall exposure to prisons and racial inequalities in incarceration, further accelerating extant trends in imprisonment in recent decades.

Author

• Jason Robey, University at Albany, SUNY