Thesis
A quantitative analysis of prison closures, 2006-2013
Washington State University
Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
12/2015
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/102796
Abstract
Imprisonment rates in the United States have been increasing considerably for over three decades - quintupling between 1972 and 2010. The growth of the imprisoned population was soon followed by a surge of correctional facility construction, with more than 1000 prisons built in the last 75 years - Texas alone built 120 facilities between 1980 and 2000. Prisons have closed periodically over time, however, starting in 2007, states started closing prisons at an accelerated rate. This thesis has two primary objectives. The first is to chart the timing, pace and pattern of prison closures. To accomplish this, a unique dataset of all closed correctional facilities since 1995 was constructed. The second objective is to use fixed-effects regression to estimate the effect of closures on the overall imprisonment rate, prison admissions and prison releases. The results indicate that the reductions of prison beds are concentrated primarily in the South and Midwest, while the reduction of prison facilities are concentrated in just four states. Further, the predictive models indicate that prison closures are hastening releases, even when controlling for functionalist and conflict indicators that are primarily used to account for changes in prison populations.
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Details
- Title
- A quantitative analysis of prison closures, 2006-2013
- Creators
- Jarred Williams
- Contributors
- Jennifer Schwartz (Chair)Gregory Hooks (Committee Member) - Washington State UniversityJames Short (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Sociology, Department of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University; [Pullman, Washington] :
- Number of pages
- 62
- Identifiers
- 99900525401301842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis