Experiments in Punishment: Explaining Differences in the Scope of Penal Sanctioning in the American States.

Abstract

Despite the vast literature on the unprecedented expansion of US prison populations since the 1970s, scholars are only beginning to understand why punishment practices in the states are fragmented. This dissertation is part of a growing body of macro-sociological research that uses shifts in penology, political economy, demography and policy to analyze the country’s penal overindulgence. Using pooled time-series cross sectional data, this project investigates differences in the scope of penal sanctioning in the American states over a thirty-year period (1978-2007). The analyses, informed by the theories used to explain front end sentencing, replicate and expand prior research examining the determinants of incarceration rates, and explore whether this theoretical framework can be usefully applied to back parole revocation. In so doing, the research presented here offers a window into the changing historical understanding of the philosophy, the form, and the function of punishment in the United States, and makes three distinct contributions to the literature. First it expands the analytical time frame and broadens the scope of theoretical explanations. Second, it examines how the determinants of sentencing practices have changed over time. Finally, it develops a framework for analyzing variations in state parole revocation rates—the only study to date to attempt to shed some light on this crucial, yet overlooked, criminal justice steering mechanism. The results indicate that states have responded to similar policy problems with idiosyncratic policy solutions shaped by social, political, economic and cultural conditions, and that these dynamics are historically contingent. In addition, the results demonstrate that front end and back end sentencing are influenced by the same factors, but in somewhat different ways. For the most part, the findings are congruent with empirical patterns uncovered in prior research; crime, symbolic threats, practical constraints, and sentencing factors all explain changes and differences in state incarceration rates and parole revocation rates. However, in comparison to findings in prior research, the results provide weak support for the influence of political factors. They point to the importance of practices of civic engagement instead, suggesting that penal sanctioning is driven by “top down” policies as well as “bottom up” democratic processes.