How Do Red or Blue States Affect Incarceration Rates in the United States?

Keywords: incarceration rates, hotspots, political geography
Abstract Type: Poster Abstract

Abstract

The following study will discuss political parties and incarceration rates at the state and federal levels. The study uses geographic information systems (GIS) and regression analysis to analyze data that has been collected by the Federal Election Commission, The Sentencing Project, the United States (U.S.) Census Bureau, the National Governor Association, and the Bureau of Justice. Spatial analyses were conducted using the Getis-Ord tool within ArcGIS Pro to identify where hotspots and coldspots in incarceration data occur in the U.S. The goal of the research is to see how political parties influence incarceration rates and see which party, if any, incarcerates more Americans by state depending on policy and demographics within one term of administration. All fifty states were examined using their incarceration rates in 2012 and 2019, with the independent variable being incarceration rates and the dependent variables include governor administrations by state, presidential electoral outcomes by state, the percent rural by state, percent vote for the Democrat presidential candidate by state, and whether or not the state is Southern (categorized based on the Civil War). Results show that southern red states, heavily impacted by the ‘War on Drugs’ era, led to more severe sentences and resulted in higher incarceration rates over time. A regression multivariate model found significant correlations between incarceration rates and presidential electoral outcomes by state and the southern states. The overall model explains the incarceration rate by state approximately 50 to 53 percent.