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Public Choice

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01.01.2019

An empirical examination of institutions and cross-country incarceration rates

verfasst von: Daniel J. D’Amico, Claudia R. Williamson

Erschienen in: Public Choice | Ausgabe 3-4/2019

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Abstract

Research converges upon institutional explanations for why some countries incarcerate more prisoners than others. The types of institutions that are particularly important are less well understood. This paper investigates empirically the associations between economic, political and legal institutions and incarceration rates in a large cross-section of countries. Using data from 2001 to 2011, we find that countries with smaller prison populations have civil legal origins and fewer years under communism. Our findings also suggest that economic institutions and other economic factors related to economic performance do not correlate with incarceration rates. Collectively, the results indicate that institutions cannot be considered in isolation, but need to be examined simultaneously, with a focus on historical, political and legal factors.

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Cavadino and Dignan (2006a, pp. 3–30, 2006b), Brodeur (2007) and Lacey (2008, pp. 3–55, 2012) provide thorough surveys.

These calculations are based on the average coefficients in Table 5.

D’Amico and Williamson (2015) rely on a similar dataset, but focus on the association between legal institutions and incarceration rates.

Mayhew and White (1997), Kangaspunta et al. (1998) and Barclay et al. (2001) find similar incarceration rates across developed and developing nations.

See also Shelley (1981), Neuman and Berger (1988) and Heiland and Shelley (1992).

De Giorgi (2006) argues that high unemployment recessions in market-based, volatile economies will lead to prison growth over time.

Butler et al. (2013) argue that a demand for retribution is a pervasive behavioral trait.

Different electoral rules and legislative competition within democratic system may have direct consequences for incarceration rates (Huber and Gordon 2004; Stucky et al. 2005; Lacey 2008, 2012; Stuntz 2011).

Nardulli (1984), Giertz and Nardulli (1985), Benson and Wollan (1989) and Benson (1990, 1994) support this argument.

For research exploring how legal institutions affect other various social outcomes, see Becker (1968), Cheung (1972), Skarbek (2011, 2014), Leeson (2013), Leeson et al. (2014), Posner (2014) and Leeson and Pierson (2016).

In contrast, the United States implemented large-scale sentencing guidelines in 1984, with substantial reforms in 2003 and 2005. Such policies constrained the discretionary powers of judicial authority. Though initially implemented to reduce mass imprisonment, recent scholars have argued that sentencing guidelines were biasing judges towards punitive severity (Klein 2005). To mitigate concerns that the United States is biasing our results, we retest our models dropping the United States. The results are unchanged.

UNODC provides global statistics on crime, criminal justice, drug trafficking and prices, drug production, and drug use. Data collected by UNODC have multiple sources. Member states submit to UNODC statistics on drugs (through the Annual Report Questionnaire) and crime and criminal justice (through the Crime Trend Survey). The data set compiled by the International Center of Prison Studies collects incarceration rates across countries (Walmsley 2011). Other data are collected through national surveys implemented by UNODC in cooperation with national governments or are compiled from scientific literature.

The UN definition: “Prisons, Penal Institutions or Correctional Institutions” means all public and privately financed institutions where persons are deprived of personal freedom. The institutions may include, but are not limited to, penal, correctional, and psychiatric facilities under the prison administration.

We recognize that panel estimation is preferred; however, all data are not collected annually, creating an unbalanced panel dataset. Therefore, we choose to average over the period to maximize observations. We have retested our results on an unbalanced panel wherein the majority of our results hold. We do not report those results, but they are available upon request.

Alternatively, in order to promote law and order, use of incarceration may be socially desirable (Garland 2001; Brown 2009). That conjecture implies a positive association between judicial quality and incarceration.

Recorded crime rates also vary considerably. For example, homicide rates average 8.43, with a standard deviation of 12.56. Japan has the lowest recorded homicides (0.48 per 100,000) and Honduras has the highest (61 per 100,000).

However, Ruddell (2005) shows a correlation between the death penalty and incarceration rates across both common and civil law countries.

Switching from logged values to prison population per 100,000 provides the following results: a country with the longest experience with communism imprisons approximately 275 more prisoners per 100,000, a death penalty country increases prison rates by about 157 inmates per 100,000, and a common law country incarcerates about 116 additional inmates per 100,000.

On the compatibility of policy strategies across legal origins, La Porta et al. (2008, p. 309) note, “courts or legislators in a country might bring into one domain a set of tools that has been used in another, based on either philosophical outlook or a desire for consistency, with adverse results.”

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Titel: An empirical examination of institutions and cross-country incarceration rates
verfasst von: Daniel J. D’Amico
Claudia R. Williamson
Publikationsdatum: 01.01.2019
Verlag: Springer US
Erschienen in: Public Choice / Ausgabe 3-4/2019
Print ISSN: 0048-5829
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-7101
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-018-00629-5

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