Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Rusche’s Marxist labor-market theory of criminal punishment has received a good deal of attention from radical criminologists. However, scholars have typically examined it in terms of unemployment and incarceration. None have yet seriously developed his theory in terms of the gender dimensions of labor-market conditions and criminal punishment. In this paper I develop Rusche’s theory to argue that the feminization and general deterioration of the labor market help explain the increasing penal severity directed against marginalized females. These gender based changes macro-economic changes create both legitimation threats to America’s patriarchal capitalist order as well as marginalized female populations. As a result, punitive populism and rising penal severity overlap with a cultural backlash to feminist inroads that criminalizes and punishes marginalized females. This bolsters the mass loyalty to the state among an increasingly male labor force experiencing growing economic performance demands and disciplines and accelerates the economic performance demands on the growing female labor force.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Much debate centers around disparate rates of incarceration, as well as reasons why people commit crime in America. Rusche & Kirchheimer (1939) propose that incarceration rates rise with unemployment due to potential threat to social order from the unemployed. Using a constructionist argument, Garland (1990) claims that punishment is the product of social structure and cultural values and thus whom we “choose” to punish, how we punish, and when we punish are determined by a dominant American ideology that reproduces and maintains a system of inequality.

Most studies using Rusche & Kirchheimer (R&K) focus on state and federal level data because disaggregated data focusing on gender and race-specific linkages on sentencing and incarceration is limited. These studies often yield inconsistent results. The aim of this paper is to move the debate from the state/federal level to the local level, as most arrests are made by local law enforcement and local economies of scale influence the employment sector. If research finds strong support for the R&K hypothesis at the local level, then Garland’s constructionist argument becomes considerably weakened.

This study utilizes county-level data from the Annual Survey of Jails to test the influence of local economy factors on sentencing outcomes in punishment, holding constant legal factors. Preliminary analysis will determine general trends, providing a basis for multi-level analysis at the next phase of research. Disaggregating local influences on sentencing by race and gender will provide another tool for analyzing potentially discriminatory practices as few studies disaggregate data based on race and fewer provide a gendered analysis focusing on women and imprisonment, which might yield considerably different results. The aim of this paper will be to capture the intersectionality of race, gender and class as it relates to employment and punishment.