Persistence in incarcerations: global comparative evidence

Journal of Criminological Research, Policy and Practice, Ahead of Print. Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess how incarcerations persist across the world. The focus is on 163 countries for the period 2010-2015. Design/methodology/approach The empirical evidence is based on generalized method of moments. In order to increase room for policy implications, the data set is decomposed into sub-samples based on income levels, religious domination, openness to the sea, regional proximity and legal origins. Findings The following main findings are established. Incarcerations are more persistent in low income, Christian-protestant and Latin American countries while comparative evidence is not feasible on the basis of landlockedness and legal origins owing to unfavorable post-estimation diagnostic tests. Justifications for the comparative advantages and relevance of findings to theory building in public economics are discussed. Practical implications First, income levels matter in the persistence of incarcerations because low-income nations vis- à-vis their high-income counterparts have less financial resources with which to prevent and deal with events like terrorism, political instability and violence that lead to incarcerations. Second, the intuition for religious domination builds on the fact that liberal societies can be more associat ed with incarcerations compared to conservative societies. The main theoretical contribution of this study to the literature is that...
Source: Journal of Criminological Research, Policy and Practice - Category: Criminology Source Type: research