>I wonder what the black unemployment figures would be if the prison
>population was factored in?
From LBO #88:
JAIL & JOBS. Whenever LBO comments on the lowness of the U.S. unemployment rate, the calls and emails arrive asking, "What about prisoners?" How would the stats look if you counted the roughly 1.8 million people in U.S. state and federal jails and prisons? Quite different.
Before presenting the chart nearby, warnings must be issued: these are rough estimates only. The prison and unemployment figures come from different sources. Overall imprisonment numbers end in 1997; those by race, 1996. To estimate 1998 figures, the 1997 figures were extrapolated using recent growth rates (45% a year, compared with population growth of 1% and a declining crime rate!); the race estimates are based on applying the 1996 mix to the 1998 estimate. The estimate for Hispanics is especially rough, and there's no sex breakdown.
The numbers are big. Adjusted for imprisonment, national unemployment rates would rise from 4.3% (in December 1998) to 5.6%. The numbers for black men are stunning, with unemployment rising from 6.7% to 16.5%. That's because almost 8% of black adult men are behind bars.
This revised unemployment measure is more a measure of social distress than a better unemployment indicator. Prisoners work, and increasingly produce for outside markets. And there are aspects of work that are prisonlike. As Michel Foucault asked in Discipline and Punish, "Is it surprising that the cellular prison, with its regular chronologies, forced labour, its authorities of surveillance and registration, its experts in normality, who continue and multiply the functions of the judge, should have become the modern instrument of penality? Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?"
Which is a bit of an exaggeration, of course, and not meant to blunt the horror of the jailing mania. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, at current rates of incarceration, a newborn black male faces a 28% lifetime chance of going to prison (not mere jail, where you're held pending trial or for a minor offense, but where you go after conviction for a serious crime), compared to 16% for a Hispanic male, and 4% for a white male. (Women face risks a tenth the corresponding male rates.) These are appalling figures, signs of a society gone mad with polarization and vengeance.
unemployed and/or jailed (December 1998)
actual adjusted difference total 4.3 5.6 +1.3
white
male 3.2 4.5 +1.3
female 3.3 3.5 +0.1
black
male 6.7 16.5 +9.7
female 7.0 7.7 +0.7
Hispanic 7.6 8.9 +1.3
Columns show actual unemployment rate, estimated rate if incarcerated population were counted as unemployed, and the difference between the two. See text for details.