The Distribution of Carceral Harm: County-Level Jail Incarceration and Mortality by Race, Sex, and Age

Abstract

Jail incarceration remains an overlooked yet crucial component of the U.S. carceral system. Although a growing literature has examined the mortality costs associ ated with residing in areas with high levels of incarceration, far less is known about how local jails shape this burden at the intersection of race, sex, and age. In this study, I exam­ine the rela­tion­ship between county-level jail incar­cer­a­tion and age-spe­cific mortal ity for non-Hispanic Black and White men and women, uniquely leveraging racespe­cific jail rates to account for the unequal racial dis­tri­bu­tion of jail expo­sures. This study finds evi­dence of pos­i­tive asso­ci­a­tions between mor­tal­ity and jail incar­cer­a­tion: this association peaks in late adulthood (ages 50–64), when increases in jail rates are associated with roughly 3% increases in mortality across all race–sex groups. However, pat­terns vary at the inter­sec­tion of race, sex, and age. In par­tic­u­lar, I find more marked and consistent penalties among women than among men. Additionally, a distinctly diver­gent age pat­tern emerges among Black men, who face insig­nifi­­cant but neg­a­tive asso­ci­a­tions at youn­ger ages but steep pen­al­ties at older ages—sig­nifi­­cantly larger among those aged 65 or older relative to their White male and Black female counterparts. Evidence further suggests that the use of race-neutral incarceration measures in prior work may mask the degree of harm associated with carceral contexts, because the jail rate for the total population underestimates the association between jail rates and mor­tal­ity across nearly all­ race–age–sex com­bi­na­tions. These find­ings high­light the need for future ecological research to differentiate between jail and prison incarceration, consider the demographic distribution of incarceration’s harms, and incorporate racialized measures of exposure so that we may better capture the magnitude of harm associated with America’s carceral state.