Collective Outbursts, Politics, and Punitive Resources: Toward a Political Sociology of Spending on Social Control

Abstract

This study tests racial threat and political explanations for yearly fluctuations in per capita spending on corrections since the early 1950s. Racial threats indicated by riots or by the presence of nonwhites do not account for changes in imprisonment rates, yet both threat conditions explain subsequent shifts in total spending on jails and prisons. Increases in the political strength of the Republican Party, past breakdowns in the family, and growth in the tax base lead to greater spending on corrections as well, but neither unemployment nor economic inequality are associated with these outlays. In comparison to findings about the determinants of imprisonment rates, the results of this study show that spending on punishment is far more responsive to the mass politics of racial threat.