WORKING PAPERS
Punishment is Purple: The Political Economy of Prison Building
The United States is unique among developed countries as the world leader in contemporary mass incarceration, a massive social change reshaping the nature of inequality. More than half of Americans have a family member or know someone in prison (Enns et al 2018). This unprecedented level of incarceration is underpinned by the tripling of prison facilities since 1970. Despite employing nearly 450,000 corrections officers, occupying 600 square miles, and costing conservatively $30 billion to build, this massive public works project has transformed the American countryside virtually unnoticed, with nearly 70 percent of facilities being built in rural communities (Eason 2010; Eason 2017). Mass incarceration—the annual imprisonment of more than 2 million Americans—was not possible without the prison boom—the increase from roughly 500 to nearly 1700 prison facilities between 1970-2010. We created strong incentives to lock up many more Americans, in part by more than tripling the number of prison facilities. continuing reading.
Same People, Different Results: Categorizing Cancer Registry Cases across the Rural-Urban Continuum
Research on cancer disparities increasingly incorporates community factors to understand variation across patient treatment and outcomes. Rurality, one such community factor, predicts later stages of cancer diagnosis, lower rates of specific therapies, less effective therapies, shorter overall survival, and higher mortality rates. These trends persist across geographical regions of the United States (U.S.) and cancer types. However, there also exists important variation in treatment and outcomes between the group of patients categorized as rural and urban. These variations result from differences in communities, patient demographics,18 and health care organizations. continue reading.