This research examines the association between economic insecurity and imprisonment rates in the United States. Building on Garland’s thesis about punishment and late modernity, it is hypothesized that rising economic insecurity in a population is associated with an increase in the imprisonment rate. This hypothesis is tested with state-level data for the years 1986–2013. Results indicate a robust association between changes in economic insecurity, measured as the percentage of households in a state losing a quarter or more of their income in a single year, and changes in imprisonment rates. This finding suggests that economic insecurity is not only relevant for explaining large-scale shifts in penal philosophy and practice, as prior sociological theory has argued. It also explains some of the year-to-year variation in imprisonment rates and points to another way in which inequality is associated with punishment.

中文翻译：

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强调惩罚点：经济不安全和国家监禁率

这项研究考察了美国经济不安全状况与监禁率之间的关系。在加兰关于惩罚和现代性的论点的基础上，假设人口中日益增加的经济不安全感与监禁率的增加有关。对该假设进行了1986-2013年国家水平数据的检验。结果表明，经济不安全感的变化与监禁率的变化之间存在密切的联系，经济不安全感的变化以该州一年中失去四分之一或更多收入的家庭的百分比来衡量。正如先前的社会学理论所指出的那样，这一发现表明，经济不安全不仅与解释刑法哲学和实践的大规模变化有关。