Clear's Imprisoning Communities provides a thoughtful and provocative look at how “mass incarceration” has increased crime and other social ills in troubled neighborhoods. Clear argues, “If people convicted of crimes are not solely a drain … their removal is not solely a positive act but also imposes losses on those networks and their capacity for strengthened community life” (p. 86). Insofar as people convicted of crimes provide benefits to their communities, imprisoning large numbers of convicted offenders from particular demographic or geographic subgroups should have negative consequences for their neighborhoods.
To test this claim, Clear compiles evidence from prior research on the effects of imprisonment for many neighborhood outcomes. Clear also discusses statistical analyses of the effects of imprisonment on crime rates in Tallahassee, Florida (from external articles) and interviewed 26 people living in two high-incarceration neighborhoods in that same city. The results of the statistical analysis provide some support for the claim that incarceration increases crime rates in a nonlinear fashion. However, as Clear himself acknowledges, the analysis is complicated by omitted variable bias, endogeneity, a small sample size, and other problems that make estimation of incarceration's effects across neighborhoods difficult.
The interviews provide better support for Clear's claims, although those too paint a picture of complexity. Clear's subjects agreed that inmates and their families suffer from shame and stigma, and they too feel stigmatized from living near ex-prisoners. The respondents reported that inmates' families struggle financially. Inmates' children, and neighborhood children generally, suffer from the absence of their parents and role models, and marriages often do not survive long periods of incarceration. Those same residents, however, also expressed support for getting drug dealers and prostitutes off the streets (p. 124) and distrust of released prisoners (p. 134). The fundamental tension exposed by the interviews and in Clear's own writing is that between sympathy for families of inmates and released prisoners and the acknowledgment that some people “you're kind of glad to get rid of for a while” (p. 124).
Thus the primary conceptual contribution of Clear's theory and data analyses is that of ambiguity. The potential benefits of incarceration as a crime prevention strategy must be weighed in light of its costs, not just in terms of budgets but also in terms of increased crime and poverty. In this way, Clear provides an interesting counterpoint to theorists who would argue that aggressive policing and incarceration strategies make neighborhoods better. In addition, Clear's writing would interest social capital theorists who, in pointing out that high-crime communities have lower social trust, imply that removing criminal elements may strengthen trust and thus other community goods such as civic engagement.
Like any insightful work, Clear's argument raises several questions. Clear seems to imply that, given two new neighborhoods that develop the same crime rates and demographic profiles, Neighborhood A, in which convicted offenders are sent to prison, will be worse off in 10 years than Neighborhood B, where convicted people are not sent to prison. This statement needs qualification. Of course, no one would argue that Neighborhood A would be worse off if its 20 murderers were sent to prison while Neighborhood B's 20 murderers remained behind, even if Neighborhood A's families were poorer. How do communities balance these concerns?
Further, how important is concentration? If incarceration were randomly allocated across neighborhoods, many of the problems with sending people to prison—i.e., family hardship—would remain. Dispersing imprisonment would make neighborhoods better because it would mean fewer struggling families living in one place; however, having low levels of incarceration spread out across many neighborhoods might further isolate inmates and their families. Likewise, several problems Clear attributes to incarceration—unemployment, stigma, antigovernment orientations, and nonvoting—also arise for probationers, although to a lesser extent. Further, if “coercive mobility” is the primary problem with incarceration, then sending people away to good programs such as rehabilitation or training might also damage communities. Conversely, if incarceration is problematic because it involves removal to a place that makes returning inmates worse off, then that merely suggests that policies should be aimed at improving prisons and reentry programs.
Instead, Clear calls for sentencing reform designed at ending mass incarceration, proposing fewer and shorter prison sentences in favor of community justice. This solution ignores the fact that hierarchies of power exist even in poor communities. Mass incarceration partly results from communities appealing to police and courts to impose the control they could not. As Clear's interviews show, community members feel ambivalence about imprisonment and often support harsh penalties for people they believe are making the neighborhood worse. Nevertheless, in emphasizing the downside of using imprisonment to reduce crime, Clear advances the study of neighborhood crime control. His insights define an agenda for a new generation of scholars, including me. This work is a must-read for everyone interested in reviving disadvantaged neighborhoods.
