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"If the rapid expansion of the penal system in the 1980s and 1990s in the US is regarded as an intervention in the labour-market and the incarcerated are counted among the ranks of the unemployed, the US male jobless rate rises to a level above the European average for most of the period since 1975. It hardly needs to be pointed out that incarceration on a per capita basis is rather more expensive than unemployment benefit. More importantly, since the job prospects of ex-convicts are significantly eroded such that they invariably leave prison to join the ranks of the long-term unemployed, the impressive employment performance of the US in the 1980s and 1990s has in fact depended in large part on a high and increasing incarceration rate at an increasing cost to the US taxpayer. Arguably, then, the US has a very expensive non-welfare state." <http://www.bham.ac.uk/POLSIS/department/staff/publications/hay_inaugural.htm>