ABSTRACT
While stratification researchers typically focus on schools, labor markets, and the family as primary institutions affecting inequality, a new institution has emerged as central to the sorting and stratifying of young disadvantaged men: the criminal justice system. With over two million individuals currently incarcerated, and well over half a million prisoners released each year, the large and growing numbers of men being processed through the criminal justice system raises important questions about the consequences of this massive institutional intervention. Further, large racial disparities in incarceration lead us to question the degree to which mass incarceration has particular implications for stratification along racial lines.
