A Generational Shift: Race and the Declining Lifetime Risk of Imprisonment

This study makes three primary contributions to a fuller understanding of the contemporary landscape of incarceration in the United States. First, we assess the scope of decarceration.   Second, our life table analysis demonstrates marked declines in the lifetime risks of incarceration. Third, decarceration has shifted the institutional experiences of young adulthood. Our results suggest that prison has played a smaller role in the institutional landscape for the most recent generation compared with the generation exposed to the peak of mass incarceration.