Hostname: page-component-669899f699-7xsfk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-05-05T02:31:03.292Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

If You Build It, They Will Fill It: The Consequences of Prison Overcrowding Litigation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Joshua Guetzkow  and
Eric Schoon
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines the consequences of prison overcrowding litigation for U.S. prisons. We use insights derived from the endogeneity of law perspective to develop expectations about the likely impact of overcrowding litigation on five outcomes: prison admissions, prison releases, spending on prison capacity, prison crowding, and incarceration rates. Using newly available data on prison overcrowding litigation cases joined with panel data on U.S. states from 1971 to 1996, we offer a novel and comprehensive analysis of the impact that overcrowding litigation has had on U.S. prisons. We find that it had no impact on admissions or release rates and did not lead to any reduction in prison crowding. Litigation did, however, lead to an increase in spending on prison capacity and incarceration rates. We discuss the implications of these results for endogeneity of law theory, attempts to achieve reform through litigation, and the politics of prison construction.

Type
Penal Law & Society
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 49 , Issue 2 , June 2015 , pp. 401 - 432
Copyright
© 2015 Law and Society Association.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

This research was supported by grants from the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy at the University of Arizona and the Aharon Barak Center for Interdisciplinary Research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The authors thank Alexandra Kalev, participants of the Jerusalem Forum on Criminal Justice, and the anonymous reviewers for their productive feedback.

References

Alexander, Michelle (2010) The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York, NY: The New Press.Google Scholar
Allen, Francis (1981) The Decline of the Rehabilitative Ideal. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Ater, Itai, Givati, Yehonatan, & Rigbi, Oren (2014) “Organizational Structure, Police Activity and Crime,” 115 J. Public Economics 62–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Austin, James, & Krisberg, Barry (1981) “Wider, Stronger, and Different Nets: The Dialectics of Criminal Justice Reform,” 18 J. of Research in Crime and Delinquency 165–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beckett, Katherine (1997) Making Crime Pay: Law and Order in Contemporary American Politics. Oxford, MS: Oxford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Beckett, Katherine, & Western, Bruce (2001) “Governing Social Marginality: Welfare, Incarceration, and the Transformation of State Policy,” 3 Punishment and Society 43–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bleich, Jeff (1989) “The Politics of Prison Crowding,” 77 California Law Rev. 1125–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boylan, Richard, & Mocan, Naci (2014) “Intended and Unintended Consequences of Prison Reform,” 30 J. of Law, Economics and Organization 558–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bronstein, Alvin (1997) “Representing the Powerless: Lawyers Can Make a Difference,” 49 Maine Law Rev. 1–19.Google Scholar
Bureau of Justice Statistics (2013) “Prisoners in 2013,” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice.Google Scholar
Carroll, Leo (1998) Lawful Order: A Case Study of Correctional Crisis and Reform. New York: Garland Publishing.Google Scholar
Chiricos, Ted G., & DeLone, Miriam A. (1992) “Labor Surplus and Punishment: A Review and Assessment of Theory and Evidence,” 39 Social Problems 421–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chung, Susanna (2000) “Prison Overcrowding: Standards in Determining Eighth Amendment Violations,” 68 Fordham Law Rev. 2351–400.Google Scholar
Crouch, Ben, & Marquart, James (1989) An Appeal to Justice: Litigated Reform of Texas Prisons. Austin, TX: Univ. of Texas Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DiMaggio, Paul, & Woody, Powell (1983) “The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields,” 48 American Sociological Rev. 147–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DiIulio, John (1990) Courts, Corrections, and the Constitution: The Impact of Judicial Intervention on Prisons and Jails. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Dobbin, Frank (2009) Inventing Equal Opportunity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dobbin, Frank, & Kelly, Erin (2007) “How to Stop Harassment: The Professional Construction of Legal Compliance in Organizations,” 112 American J. of Sociology 1203–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dobbin, Frank, et al. (1993) “Equal Opportunity Law and the Construction of Internal Labor Markets,” 99 American J. of Sociology 396–442.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dyer, Joel (2000) The Perpetual Prisoner Machine: How America Profits from Crime. Boulder, CO: Westview.Google Scholar
Eason, John (2006) “Development by Arrest: Theorizing the Growth of the Penal System in Rural America.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Society, Montreal, Canada.Google Scholar
Eason, John (2010) “Mapping Prison Proliferation: Region, Rurality, Race and Disadvantage in Prison Placement,” 39 Social Science Research 1015–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edelman, Lauren (1990) “Legal Environments and Organizational Governance: The Expansion of Due Process in the Workplace,” 95 American J. of Sociology 1401–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edelman, Lauren (2005) “The Endogeneity of Law: Civil Rights at Work,” in Nelson, Robert, & Nielsen, Laura Beth, eds., Handbook on Employment Discrimination Research: Rights and Realities. New York: Kluwer Academic Press.Google Scholar
Eason, John (1999) “The Endogeneity of Legal Regulation: Grievance Procedures as Rational Myth,” 105 American J. of Sociology 406–54.Google Scholar
Edelman, Lauren, et al. (2011) “When Organizations Rule: Judicial Deference to Institutionalized Employment Structures,” 117 American J. of Sociology 888–954.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellwood, John, & Guetzkow, Joshua (2009) “Footing the Bill: Causes and Budgetary Consequences of State Spending on Corrections,” in Raphael, Steven, & Stoll, Michael, eds., Do Prisons Make Us Safer? The Benefits and Costs of the Prison Boom. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Feeley, Malcolm, & Rubin, Edward (1992) “Prison Litigation and Bureaucratic Development,” 17 Law and Social Inquiry 125–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feeley, Malcolm, & Rubin, Edward (1999) Judicial Policy Making and the Modern State: How the Courts Reformed America's Prisons. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Feeley, Malcolm, & Swearingen, Van (2004) “The Prison Conditions Cases and the Bureaucratization of American Corrections: Influences, Impacts and Implications,” 24 Pace Law Rev. 433–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fliter, John (1996) “Another Look at the Judicial Power of the Purse: Courts, Corrections, and State Budgets in the 1980s,” 30 Law and Society Rev. 399–416.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fording, Richard (2001) “The Political Response to Black Insurgency: A Critical Test of Competing Theories of the State,” 95 American Political Science Rev. 115–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garland, David (2001a) The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Control in Contemporary Society. Oxford, MS: Oxford Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garland, David (2001b) Mass Imprisonment: Social Causes and Consequences. New York, NY: Sage Publications.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gottschalk, Marie (2006) The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Greenberg, David F., & West, Valerie (2001) “State Prison Populations and Their Growth, 1971–1991,” 39 Criminology 615–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hadri, Kaddour (2000) “Testing for Stationarity in Heterogeneous Panel Data,” 3 Econometrics J. 148–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harriman, Linda, & Straussman, Jeffrey (1983) “Do Judges Determine Budget Decisions? Federal Court Decisions in Prison Reform and State Spending for Corrections,” 43 Public Administration Rev. 343–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackson, Pamela Irving (1989) Minority Group Threat, Crime, and Policing: Social Context and Social Control. New York, NY: Praeger.Google Scholar
Jacobs, David, & Carmichael, Jason (2001) “The Politics of Punishment Across Time and Space: A Pooled Time-Series Analysis of Imprisonment Rates,” 80 Social Forces 61–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacobs, David, & Helms, Ronald E. (1996) “Towards a Political Model of Incarceration: A Time-Series Examination of Multiple Explanations for Prison Admission Rates,” 102 American J. of Sociology 323–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacobs, David, & Helms, Ronald E. (1999) “Collective Outbursts, Politics, and Punitive Resources: Towards a Political Sociology of Spending on Social Control,” 77 Social Forces 1497–523.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacobs, David, & Helms, Ronald E. (2001) “Toward a Political Sociology of Punishment: Politics and Changes in the Incarcerated Population,” 30 Social Science Research 171–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacobs, James (1983–1984) “The Politics of Prison Expansion,” 12 New York Univ. Rev. of Law and Social Change 209–41.Google Scholar
Kalev, Alexandra, Dobbin, Frank, & Kelly, Erin (2006) “Best Practices or Best Guesses? Assessing the Efficacy of Corporate Affirmative Action and Diversity Policies,” 71 American Sociological Rev. 589–617.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klarner, Carl (2003) “The Measurement of the Partisan Balance of State Government,” 3 State Politics & Policy Quarterly 309–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levitt, Steven (1996) “The Effect of Prison Population Size on Crime Rates: Evidence from Prison Overcrowding Legislation,” 111 The Q. J. of Economics 319–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Libov, Charlotte (1987) “NIMBY Takes Hold.” The New York Times (accessed 10 April 2013).Google Scholar
Lynch, Mona (2009) Sunbelt Justice: Arizona and the Transformation of American Punishment. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Manza, Jeff, & Uggen, Christopher (2006) Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy. Oxford, MS: Oxford Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, Isaac (2008) The Permanent Tax Revolt: How the Property Tax Transformed American Politics. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, Steve, & Ekland-Olson, Sheldon (1987) Texas Prisons: The Walls Came Tumbling Down. Austin, TX: Texas Monthly Press.Google Scholar
Mauer, Mark (2006) The Race to Incarcerate, 2nd ed. New York, NY: The New Press.Google Scholar
Meyer, John, & Rowan, Brian (1977) “Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony,” 83 American J. of Sociology 340–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Michalowski, Raymond J., & Carlson, Susan M. (1999) “Unemployment, Imprisonment, and Social Structures of Accumulation: Historical Contingency in the Rusche-Kirchheimer Hypothesis,” 37 Criminology 217–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, Lisa (2008) The Perils of Federalism: Race, Poverty, and the Politics of Crime Control. Oxford, MS: Oxford Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nichols, Austin, & Schaffer, Mark (2007) “Clustered Errors in Stata.” Paper presented at the U.K. Stata User's Group Meeting, London, U.K.Google Scholar
O'Connor, James (1973) The Fiscal Crisis of the State. New York: St. Martin's Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pager, Devah (2007) Marked: Raced, Crime and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richie, Beth (2012) Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America's Prison Nation. New York, NY: New York Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Rosenberg, Gerald (1991) The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change? Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Rusche, Georg, & Kirchheimer, Otto (1968[1939]) Punishment and Social Structure. New York, NY: Columbia Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Schlanger, Margo (1999) “Beyond the Hero Judge: Institutional Reform Litigation as Litigation,” 97 Michigan Law Rev. 1994–2036.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schlanger, Margo (2003) “Inmate Litigation.” 116 Harvard Law Rev. 1557–701.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schlanger, Margo (2006) “Civil Rights Injunctions over Time: A Case of Study of Jail and Prison Court Orders,” 81 NYU Law Rev. 550–630.Google Scholar
Schlanger, Margo, & Lieberman, Denise (2006) “Using Court Records for Research, Teaching and Policymaking: The Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse,” 75 UMKC Law Rev. 153–67.Google Scholar
Schoenfeld, Heather (2010) “Mass Incarceration and the Paradox of Prison Conditions Litigation,” 44 Law and Society Rev. 731–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scraton, Phil, Sim, Joe, & Skidmore, Paula (1991) Prisons under Protest. Buckingham, UK: Open Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Stevenson, Bryan (2014) Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. New York, NY: Spiegel and Grau.Google Scholar
Stock, James, & Watson, Mark (2008) “Heteroskedasticity-Robust Standard Errors for Fixed Effects Panel Data Regression,” 76 Econometrica 155–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stryker, Robin, Docka-Filipek, Danielle, & Wald, Pamela (2011) “Employment Discrimination Law and Industrial Psychology: Social Science as Social Authority and the Co-Production of Law and Science,” 37 Law & Social Inquiry 777–914.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stucky, T. D., Heimer, Karen, & Lang, Joseph B. (2005) “Partisan Politics, Electoral Competition and Imprisonment: An Analysis of States over Time,” 43 Criminology 211–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stucky, Thomas D., Heimer, Karen, & Lang, Joseph B. (2007) “A Bigger Piece of the Pie? State Corrections Spending and the Politics of Social Order,” 44 J. of Research in Crime and Delinquency 91–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sturm, Susan (1993) “The Legacy and Future of Corrections Litigation,” 142 Univ. of Pennsylvania Law Rev. 639–738.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sutton, John (2000) “Imprisonment and Social Classification in Five Common-Law Democracies, 1955–1985,” 106 American J. of Sociology 350–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taggart, William (1989) “Redefining the Power of the Federal Judiciary: The Impact of Court-Ordered Prison Reform on State Expenditures for Corrections,” 23 Law and Society Rev. 241–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Talesh, Shauhina (2009) “The Privatization of Public Legal Rights: How Manufacturers Construct the Meaning of Consumer Law,” 43 Law and Society Rev. 527–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, Charles (1997) Private Adult Correctional Facility Census. Univ. of Florida, Gainesville, FL.: Center for Studies in Criminology and Law.Google Scholar
Turner, Robert, & N.d, David Thayer. “Yes in My Backyard! Why Do Rural Communities Use Prison Based Economic Development Strategies?” Unpublished Manuscript.Google Scholar
Turner, Susan, et al. (2006) “An Evaluation of the Federal Government's Violent Offender Incarceration and Truth-in-Sentencing Incentive Grants,” 86 Prison J. 364–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wacquant, Loïc (2001) “Deadly Symbiosis: When Prison and Ghetto Meet and Mesh,” 3 Punishment and Society 95–133.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wakefield, Sara, & Uggen, Christopher (2010) “Incarceration and Stratification,” 36 Annual Rev. of Sociology, 387–406.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Western, Bruce (2007) Punishment and Inequality in America. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Wooldredge, John, Griffin, Timothy, & Pratt, Travis (2001) “Considering Hierarchical Models for Research on Inmate Behavior: Predicting Misconduct with Multilevel Data,” 18 Justice Q. 203–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wooldridge, Jeffrey M. (2012) Introductory Econometrics: A Modern Approach, 5th ed. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.Google Scholar
Yackle, Larry (1989) Reform and Regret: The Story of Federal Judicial Intervention in the Alabama Prison System. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Zimring, Frank, & Hawkins, Gordon (1991) The Scale of Imprisonment. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar