Racial Disproportionality in Prison Admissions: A County-by-County Analysis
Advisor Information
Pauline Brennan
Location
UNO Criss Library, Room 232
Presentation Type
Oral Presentation
Start Date
7-3-2014 9:00 AM
End Date
7-3-2014 9:15 AM
Abstract
This paper investigates racial disproportionality in prison admissions on a county-by-county level for the states of Iowa and Missouri. Although these states border one another they differ in significant ways—Missouri shares characteristics with southern states because it practiced slavery whereas Iowa did not, but research shows that Iowa disproportionately imprisons blacks although it has a substantially lower black population than Missouri. We examined whether the racial threat hypothesis explained disparity in new prison admissions while also considering whether differences in political ideology at the county level mattered. Specifically, we looked at the effects of the percentage of individuals in each county who voted Republican in the 2004 presidential election as well as the percentage of whites living in each county on our dependent variable (i.e., black prison counts). We found that net of other variables black prison counts were higher in Iowa than Missouri. There was evidence supporting the racial threat hypothesis in both Iowa and Missouri, but there was no evidence that political ideology effected black prison counts in either state.
Racial Disproportionality in Prison Admissions: A County-by-County Analysis
UNO Criss Library, Room 232
This paper investigates racial disproportionality in prison admissions on a county-by-county level for the states of Iowa and Missouri. Although these states border one another they differ in significant ways—Missouri shares characteristics with southern states because it practiced slavery whereas Iowa did not, but research shows that Iowa disproportionately imprisons blacks although it has a substantially lower black population than Missouri. We examined whether the racial threat hypothesis explained disparity in new prison admissions while also considering whether differences in political ideology at the county level mattered. Specifically, we looked at the effects of the percentage of individuals in each county who voted Republican in the 2004 presidential election as well as the percentage of whites living in each county on our dependent variable (i.e., black prison counts). We found that net of other variables black prison counts were higher in Iowa than Missouri. There was evidence supporting the racial threat hypothesis in both Iowa and Missouri, but there was no evidence that political ideology effected black prison counts in either state.