Question

Name at least three unintended consequences of an ever-increasing prison population.

Answer 1

Many economists suspect that adverse effects of incarceration may be an important factor for high recurrence rates on future employment prospects. Stable work is generally believed to be one of the main factors in successful reentry and criminal desistence in the community. Ex-inmate job opportunities don't look good. Only 30 per cent reported a legitimate income 7 years after release. The percentage of prisoners reporting actual earnings above the official poverty line is even lower (20 per cent). In the first place, many prisoners have less academic achievement and fewer work experience than the general population.

Meanwhile, imprisonment can still cause job prospects for the inmates to deteriorate. Incarceration prevents inmates from gaining formal work experience and developing work skills, which in their 20s and 30s can be particularly damaging for a large number of inmates. A further important factor may be the stigma associated with incarceration. Survey results from over 3,000 employers in American big cities indicate that over 60 percent of employers would "possibly not" or "definitely not" recruit a criminal record applicant

The expansion of the prison system exacerbates socio-economic inequalities in two main ways: imprisonment reduces the life chances of people exposed to it and indirectly leads to shifts of economic resources from urban settings to other sites. Imprisonment is well known to impair work prospects, but the degree of impair is contested.