Racial Variation in the Effect of Incarceration on Neighborhood Disadvantage

Although more than 700,000 individuals are released from American prisons each year, little is known about the characteristics of the neighborhoods they reside in upon release. In this study the authors employ nationally representative longitudinal data to test the effect of incarceration on neighborhood attainment. They find that whites and, to a lesser extent, Hispanics live in significantly more disadvantaged neighborhoods after prison than they did prior to prison, whereas blacks do not. While African-American ex-inmates – on average – reside in the worst neighborhoods upon release, this reflects the disadvantaged neighborhoods of blacks prior to incarceration. Besides advancing our understanding of the social consequences of the expansion of the prison population, these findings demonstrate the importance of controlling for pre-prison characteristics when investigating the effects of incarceration on neighborhood and other residential outcomes.