Citation

Schmertmann CP, Amankwaa AA, Long RD. Demography 1998; 35(4): 445-463.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1998, Population Association of America, Publisher Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Much of the debate about the costs and benefits of "three-strikes" laws for repeat felony offenders is implicitly demographic relying on unexamined assumptions about prison population dynamics. However, even state-of-the-art analysis has omitted important demographic details. We construct a multistate life-table model of population flows to and from prisons, incorporating age-specific transition rates estimated from administrative data from Florida. We use the multistate life-table model to investigate patterns of prison population growth and aging under many variants of three-strikes laws. Our analysis allows us to quantify these demographic changes and suggests that the aging of prison populations under three-strikes policies will significantly undermine their long-run effectiveness.