criminal castes, classes, and status groups

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criminal castes, classes, and status groups

• Christopher Uggen, University of Minnesota
• based on work with
• Jeff Manza, Northwestern University
• Melissa Thompson, Portland State University

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social position of Americas criminal class

• prisoners v. felons
• numbers
• collateral sanctions
• stigma
• conceptualization
• social class
• status group
• caste

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u.s. correctional populations, 1980-2004
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how many? life table methodology

• number exiting prison since 1920s
• data improve in 1948, mid-1970s
• reductions for recidivism
• 66 lifetime rate for prison/parole
• 57 for probation/jail
• reductions for mortality
• felon multiplier 1.5(black male rate)
• simplifying assumptions

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imprisonment criterion

• current 2.3 million prison and parole
• 2 of adult males
• 6.6 of black adult males
• ex 4 million ex-prison and parole
• total 6.3 million
• 2.9 of adult population
• 5.5 of adult males
• 17 of black adult males

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u.s. prisoners estimated ex-prisoners, 1948-2004
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u.s. prisoners and estimated ex-prisoners as
percentage of adult population, 1948-2004
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felony criterion

• current 4.4 million current felons (prison,
  parole, felony probation, convicted felony jail)
• 3.6 of adult males
• 10 of black adult males
• ex 11.7 million ex-felons
• total 16.1 million
• 7.5 of adult population
• 13 of adult males
• 33 of black adult males

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u.s. felons estimated ex-felons, 1968-2004
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u.s. felons and estimated ex-felons as percent of
adult population by race, 1968-2004
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how many?

• 4 million ex-prisoners, 12 million ex-felons
• punishment cuts a wider swath through the life
  fortunes of young people today
• millions of former criminals live and work among
  us every day
• who are they?
• off-time on adult markers
• fewer than half ever married, received high
  school diploma bare majority work full-time
• most convicted of non-violent offenses

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collateral sanctions life chances

• socioeconomic
• occupational licensure
• public employment
• pell grants (drug)
• public assistance (drug)
• family
• public housing (drug)
• parental rights
• divorce
• civic
• voting
• juror
• internet record
• deportation

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increasingly public stigma

• access to records
• arrest and misdemeanors
• registries
• vigilantes. michael mullens note to the seattle
  times
• "the state of washington like many states now
  lists sexual deviants on the net. and on most of
  these sites it shares with us what sexual crimes
  these men have been caught for ... we cannot tell
  the public so-and-so is 'likely' going to hurt
  another child, and here is his address then
  expect us to sit back and wait to see what child
  is next.
• plates, signs, uniforms

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theorizing social position

• felons as caste
• extreme social closure, spanning generations
• marked for life indelible
• excluded from wide-ranging institutions
• application to sex offenders?
• addresses, photos, personal histories widely
  disseminated
• not bound by blood or endogamous marriage

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prisoners and jail inmates as percentage of all
in poverty, by race
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felons as class

• (mostly) lack property
• Marxian lumpenproletariat and Wilsons
  underclass?
• Distinctive stigma not shared by others
• Excluded class (e.g., Wacquants meshing of
  ghetto and prison)
• No common relationship to the economic system by
  virtue of conviction

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felons as status group

• a specific, positive or negative, social
  estimation of honor
• a unique negative status honor, attaching to
  felony conviction
• Impacts standing as citizens, deference and
  derogation in community

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programmatic questions

• formal rulemaking
• Variation across space and time
• individual impacts
• Effects of stigma on behavior
• aggregate impacts
• Effects on communities, states, nations
• informal stigma
• Variation in status dishonor
• generality of desistance
• Malleability, not stability

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