ABSTRACT
But though the effort to understand the social consequences for America of mass incarceration is just beginning, it is clear that the huge rises in incarceration-heavily concentrated in low-income communities andespecially communities of color-have had far-reaching and deeply troubling effects that few bothered to think about in advance. Dina Rose and Todd Clear (1998) have shown, for example, that the removal of a substantial proportion of adult residents from the neighborhoods hit hardest by mass imprisonment operates, beyond a certain point, to undercut the community's capacity for informal social control. Bruce Western (2001 ), Richard Freeman (1992), and others have shown that early imprisonment profoundly and adversely affects young people's chances of stable and well-paying work for years afterward, and that indeed going to prison has
even more negative consequences for employment among black youth than dropping out of school does.
