Does Incarceration Reduce Voting? Evidence about the Political Consequences of Spending Time in Prison

The rise in mass incarceration provides a growing impetus to understand the effect that interactions with the criminal justice system have on political participation. While a substantial body of prior research studies the political consequences of criminal disenfranchisement, less work examines why...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of politics 2017-10, Vol.79 (4), p.1130-1146
Main Authors: Gerber, Alan S., Huber, Gregory A., Meredith, Marc, Biggers, Daniel R., Hendry, David J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bias
Criminal justice
Criminal justice system
Disenfranchisement
Ex-convicts
Expenditures
Falls
Imprisonment
Measurement
Measurement errors
Political behavior
Political participation
Selection bias
Voter behavior
Voting rights
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Summary:The rise in mass incarceration provides a growing impetus to understand the effect that interactions with the criminal justice system have on political participation. While a substantial body of prior research studies the political consequences of criminal disenfranchisement, less work examines why eligible ex-felons vote at very low rates. We use administrative data on voting and interactions with the criminal justice system from Pennsylvania to assess whether the association between incarceration and reduced voting is causal. Using administrative records that reduce the possibility of measurement error, we employ several different research designs to investigate the possibility that the observed negative correlation between incarceration and voting might result from differences across individuals that lead both to incarceration and to low participation. As this selection bias issue is addressed, we find that the estimated effect of serving time in prison on voting falls dramatically and for some research designs vanishes entirely.
ISSN:0022-3816
1468-2508
DOI:10.1086/692670