IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ratsoc/v29y2017i3p257-297.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Counterproductive punishment: How prison gangs undermine state authority

Author

Listed:
  • Benjamin Lessing

Abstract

State efforts to provide law and order can be counterproductive: mass-incarceration policies, while incapacitating and deterring individual criminals, can simultaneously strengthen collective criminal networks. Sophisticated prison gangs use promises of protection or punishment inside prison to influence and organize criminal activity on the street. Typical crime-reduction policies that make incarceration likelier and sentences harsher can increase prison gangs’ power over street-level members and affiliates, a formal model shows. Leading cases from the Americas corroborate these predictions: periods of sharply rising incarceration, driven partly by anti-gang laws, preceded qualitative leaps in prison-gang power on the street. Critically, prison gangs use this capacity not only to govern and tax criminal markets but also to win leverage over state officials by orchestrating terror attacks, intentionally curtailing quotidian violence, or both. Thus, even if increased incarceration leads to reduced crime, it may do so by strengthening prison-gang power at the expense of state authority.

Suggested Citation

  • Benjamin Lessing, 2017. "Counterproductive punishment: How prison gangs undermine state authority," Rationality and Society, , vol. 29(3), pages 257-297, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:ratsoc:v:29:y:2017:i:3:p:257-297
    DOI: 10.1177/1043463117701132
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1043463117701132
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1043463117701132?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fiorentini,Gianluca & Peltzman,Sam (ed.), 1997. "The Economics of Organised Crime," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521629553, January.
    2. Steven D. Levitt, 1996. "The Effect of Prison Population Size on Crime Rates: Evidence from Prison Overcrowding Litigation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 111(2), pages 319-351.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Raphael, Steven & Winter-Ember, Rudolf, 2001. "Identifying the Effect of Unemployment on Crime," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 44(1), pages 259-283, April.
    2. M. Martin Boyer, 2007. "Resistance (to Fraud) Is Futile," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 74(2), pages 461-492, June.
    3. Milo Bianchi & Paolo Buonanno & Paolo Pinotti, 2012. "Do Immigrants Cause Crime?," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 10(6), pages 1318-1347, December.
    4. Randi Hjalmarsson, 2009. "Juvenile Jails: A Path to the Straight and Narrow or to Hardened Criminality?," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 52(4), pages 779-809, November.
    5. Giulio Fella & Giovanni Gallipoli, 2014. "Education and Crime over the Life Cycle," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 81(4), pages 1484-1517.
    6. David Roodman & James G. MacKinnon & Morten Ørregaard Nielsen & Matthew D. Webb, 2019. "Fast and wild: Bootstrap inference in Stata using boottest," Stata Journal, StataCorp LLC, vol. 19(1), pages 4-60, March.
    7. Richard B. Freeman, 1996. "Why Do So Many Young American Men Commit Crimes and What Might We Do about It?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 10(1), pages 25-42, Winter.
    8. Fajnzylber, Pablo & Lederman, Daniel & Loayza, Norman, 2002. "What causes violent crime?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(7), pages 1323-1357, July.
    9. Magnus Lofstrom & Steven Raphael, 2016. "Crime, the Criminal Justice System, and Socioeconomic Inequality," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 30(2), pages 103-126, Spring.
    10. Steven D. Levitt, 1998. "Juvenile Crime and Punishment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(6), pages 1156-1185, December.
    11. Philip A. Curry & Anindya Sen & George Orlov, 2016. "Crime, apprehension and clearance rates: Panel data evidence from Canadian provinces," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 49(2), pages 481-514, May.
    12. Edmark, Karin, 2003. "The Effects of Unemployment on Property Crime: Evidence from a Period of Unusually Large Swings in the Business Cycle," Working Paper Series 2003:14, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    13. Paolo Pinotti, 2012. "The economic costs of organized crime: evidence from southern Italy," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 868, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    14. Lucia dalla Pellegrina & Giorgio Di Maio & Donato Masciandaro & Margherita Saraceno, 2020. "Organized crime, suspicious transaction reporting and anti-money laundering regulation," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(12), pages 1761-1775, December.
    15. Lauridsen, Jørgen & Nannerup, Niels & Skak, Morten, 2013. "Does Owner-Occupied Housing Affect Neighbourhood Crime?," Discussion Papers on Economics 19/2013, University of Southern Denmark, Department of Economics.
    16. Paolo Pinotti, 0. "The Credibility Revolution in the Empirical Analysis of Crime," Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti, Springer;Società Italiana degli Economisti (Italian Economic Association), vol. 0, pages 1-14.
    17. Piopiunik, Marc & Ruhose, Jens, 2017. "Immigration, regional conditions, and crime: Evidence from an allocation policy in Germany," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 258-282.
    18. Reuter, Peter & Roman, John & Gaviria, Alejandro, 2000. "Comments," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 123283, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    19. Jonathan M.V. Davis & Sara B. Heller, 2017. "Rethinking the Benefits of Youth Employment Programs: The Heterogeneous Effects of Summer Jobs," NBER Working Papers 23443, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Christophe Bellégo & Joeffrey Drouard, 2019. "Does It Pay to Fight Crime? Evidence From the Pacification of Slums in Rio de Janeiro," Working Papers 2019-08, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:ratsoc:v:29:y:2017:i:3:p:257-297. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.