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The Relationship Between Mass Incarceration And Crime In The Neoliberal Period In The United States, Geert Leo Dhondt
The Relationship Between Mass Incarceration And Crime In The Neoliberal Period In The United States, Geert Leo Dhondt
Open Access Dissertations
The United States prison population has grown seven-fold over the past 35 years. This dissertation looks at the impact this growth in incarceration has on crime rates and seeks to understand why this drastic change in public policy happened.
Simultaneity between prison populations and crime rates makes it difficult to isolate the causal effect of changes in prison populations on crime. This dissertation uses marijuana and cocaine mandatory minimum sentencing to break that simultaneity. Using panel data for 50 states over 40 years, this dissertation finds that the marginal addition of a prisoner results in a higher, not lower, crime …