Do we know how much of this increase is due to changes in crime or policing or sentencing? I know people make different claims because they have a stake in it, those claims. Do we know anything reliable about that? Yeah, I mean the evidence is pretty clear. The crime rate is down to levels we haven't seen since the late 1960s. So crime is way down from its historic heights.
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.