title: Three strikes and you're out: demographic analysis of mandatory prison sentencing.
abstract: Much of the debate about the costs and benefits of "three-strikes" laws for repeat felony offenders is implicitly demographic, relying on unexamined assumptions about prison population dynamics. However, even state-of-the-art analysis has omitted important demographic details. We construct a multistate life-table model of population flows to and from prisons, incorporating age-specific transition rates estimated from administrative data from Florida. We use the multistate life-table model to investigate patterns of prison population growth and aging under many variants of three-strikes laws. Our analysis allows us to quantify these demographic changes and suggests that the aging of prison populations under three-strikes policies will significantly undermine their long-run effectiveness.
authors.affiliation: Center for the Study of Population, Florida State University, Tallahassee 32306-2240, USA. schmertmann@fsu.edu
authors.forename: C P
authors.initials: CP
authors.lastname: Schmertmann
authors.forename: A A
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Amankwaa
authors.forename: R D
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: Long
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D003710:Demography; D005431:Florida / Q000453:epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D015993:Life Tables; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015233:Models, Statistical; D009026:Mortality / Q000639:trends; D011329:Prisoners / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011640:Public Policy