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Toward a Demographic Understanding of Incarceration Disparities: Race, Ethnicity, and Age Structure

OBJECTIVES: Non-Hispanic blacks and Hispanics in the United States are more likely to be incarcerated than non-Hispanic whites. The risk of incarceration also varies with age, and there are striking differences in age distributions across racial/ethnic groups. Guided by these trends, the present stu...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Vogel, Matt, Porter, Lauren C.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5106500/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27928196
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10940-015-9265-6
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author Vogel, Matt
Porter, Lauren C.
author_facet Vogel, Matt
Porter, Lauren C.
author_sort Vogel, Matt
collection PubMed
description OBJECTIVES: Non-Hispanic blacks and Hispanics in the United States are more likely to be incarcerated than non-Hispanic whites. The risk of incarceration also varies with age, and there are striking differences in age distributions across racial/ethnic groups. Guided by these trends, the present study examines the extent to which differences in age structure account for incarceration disparities across racial and ethnic groups. METHODS: We apply two techniques commonly employed in the field of demography, age-standardization and decomposition, to data provided by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the 2010 decennial census to assess the contribution of age structure to racial and ethnic disparities in incarceration. FINDINGS: The non-Hispanic black and Hispanic incarceration rates in 2010 would have been 13–20 % lower if these groups had age structures identical to that of the non-Hispanic white population. Moreover, age structure accounts for 20 % of the Hispanic/white disparity and 8 % of the black/white disparity. CONCLUSION: The comparison of crude incarceration rates across racial/ethnic groups may not be ideal because these groups boast strikingly different age structures. Since the risk of imprisonment is tied to age, criminologists should consider adjusting for age structure when comparing rates of incarceration across groups.
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spelling pubmed-51065002016-12-05 Toward a Demographic Understanding of Incarceration Disparities: Race, Ethnicity, and Age Structure Vogel, Matt Porter, Lauren C. J Quant Criminol Original Paper OBJECTIVES: Non-Hispanic blacks and Hispanics in the United States are more likely to be incarcerated than non-Hispanic whites. The risk of incarceration also varies with age, and there are striking differences in age distributions across racial/ethnic groups. Guided by these trends, the present study examines the extent to which differences in age structure account for incarceration disparities across racial and ethnic groups. METHODS: We apply two techniques commonly employed in the field of demography, age-standardization and decomposition, to data provided by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the 2010 decennial census to assess the contribution of age structure to racial and ethnic disparities in incarceration. FINDINGS: The non-Hispanic black and Hispanic incarceration rates in 2010 would have been 13–20 % lower if these groups had age structures identical to that of the non-Hispanic white population. Moreover, age structure accounts for 20 % of the Hispanic/white disparity and 8 % of the black/white disparity. CONCLUSION: The comparison of crude incarceration rates across racial/ethnic groups may not be ideal because these groups boast strikingly different age structures. Since the risk of imprisonment is tied to age, criminologists should consider adjusting for age structure when comparing rates of incarceration across groups. Springer US 2015-09-12 2016 /pmc/articles/PMC5106500/ /pubmed/27928196 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10940-015-9265-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2015 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
spellingShingle Original Paper
Vogel, Matt
Porter, Lauren C.
Toward a Demographic Understanding of Incarceration Disparities: Race, Ethnicity, and Age Structure
title Toward a Demographic Understanding of Incarceration Disparities: Race, Ethnicity, and Age Structure
title_full Toward a Demographic Understanding of Incarceration Disparities: Race, Ethnicity, and Age Structure
title_fullStr Toward a Demographic Understanding of Incarceration Disparities: Race, Ethnicity, and Age Structure
title_full_unstemmed Toward a Demographic Understanding of Incarceration Disparities: Race, Ethnicity, and Age Structure
title_short Toward a Demographic Understanding of Incarceration Disparities: Race, Ethnicity, and Age Structure
title_sort toward a demographic understanding of incarceration disparities: race, ethnicity, and age structure
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5106500/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27928196
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10940-015-9265-6
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