The Role of Prison Guards in the Development of Prisons in California

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Prison guards have an incredibly powerful union in the state of California and although I've never seen it I've heard it alluded to multiple times apparently when you walk out of the state house in Sacramento California right there's a memorial to a prison guard. It speaks to sort of a very powerful sort of role that prison guards have played in the development and expansion of prisons specifically inCalifornia. There are private prison interests in some states not in all states who may be arguing for a more punitive approach which is politically quite appealing i think toquite a lot of people. But if they're not able to work or contribute to their families then we may all be actually worse off than we were before.

Becky Pettit of the University of Washington and author of Invisible Men talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the growth of the prison population in the United States in recent decades. Pettit describes the magnitude of the increase particularly among demographic groups. She then discusses the implications of this increase for interpreting social statistics. Because the prison population isn't included in the main government surveys used by social scientists, data drawn from those surveys can be misleading as to what is actually happening among demographic groups, particularly the African-American population.