Mass Incarceration and the Racial Wealth and Income Gaps

Broad-Based Policies to Reduce the Racial Wealth and Income Gaps

I recently published a piece in this blog in which I suggested that the income and wealth gaps between Black and White people could be reduced by policies that provided non-cash income to a broad swath of our population. Specifically, I mentioned a tax-supported, national health insurance program, free post-secondary education and changes in housing policy to encourage the development of affordable housing.

My argument was that such policies would do two things. First, they would reduce the importance of the income gap directly by providing people with non-cash income in the form of services. Second, such policies would reduce the financial burdens that poor and working-class Americans bear and thus make it easier for them to build wealth. Since Black people are more likely than White people to be poor or working class, Black people would on average benefit more than White people, and the wealth gap would be reduced.

The Importance of Mass Incarceration

In response to my blog piece, a colleague sent me an email in which he said,

Fair housing, universal healthcare, and equal hiring practices are great initiatives that we should work on. Mass incarceration and the after effects of having a prison record can unfortunately undermine some of these worthy initiatives. Tough to get a job, get a student loan, acquire housing if you have been incarcerated. Mass incarceration is systemic racism disguised as "law and order.”

My colleague is obviously correct. Mass incarceration inflicts grievous damage on Black people in our country. Using current incarceration rates, studies have shown that approximately, one-third of Black men will probably be imprisoned at some time in their lives.  How many imprisoned people would that be? Well, there are about 47 million Black people in our country, which means that there are approximately 23.5 million Black men, and if one-third of them go to prison at some time in their lives, about 7.8 million people will be imprisoned.

That is a big number, but it does not include all of the people affected by mass incarceration. Some of those men will have families. They will have wives (partners?) and children. Let us assume that half of the imprisoned men have families with two children.  That would give us 3.9 million families and 11.7 million wives and children in those families. Adding in the men themselves, we get a total of 19.5 million people or about 42% of the Black population of the United States whose economic prospects are damaged by the policy of mass incarceration. We cannot rely very heavily on these numbers because our assumptions may not be exactly correct, but the general point is clear: a very large share of the Black population of this country will have its economic prospects damaged by our practice of mass incarceration.

Broad-based Policies Can Still Help

Such people might still be helped by the policies that I proposed. If the families of incarcerated men had tax-supported health care and affordable housing, the economic damage inflicted by mass incarceration would be reduced, and if a child of an incarcerated man had access to free post-secondary education, he or she would be more likely to overcome the barriers imposed by the poverty that was caused in part by mass incarceration.

We Must Also Eliminate Mass Incarceration

Nevertheless, my colleague is correct. The effect of my proposals would be reduced for such people because their poverty would make it much harder for them to accumulate wealth. Their poverty would be alleviated, but it would not be eliminated. Thus, we can conclude that a broad attack on the income and wealth gaps between the races should include both the kinds of policies that I have recommended and the elimination or reduction of mass incarceration.