Mass Incarceration

Jessica Simes was working as an unpaid intern at the Massachusetts Department of Correction when she discovered that the state’s records included data rarely available in prison systems—the last known addresses for each incarcerated person since 1997. Simes, who was then a graduate student in sociology, realized the data could help her investigate the relationship between mass incarceration, racial and class inequities, and place.

By analyzing and mapping the zip codes for Massachusetts prison admissions between 1997 and 2017—a period that includes the War on Drugs and the peak of mass incarceration in the United States—she made a startling discovery: The majority of people going to prison were not from Boston, as in the past, but instead from predominantly Black and Latinx neighborhoods in smaller cities, such as Pittsfield, Holyoke, Lowell, Lynn, Lawrence, Brockton, and Fall River, as well as from suburbs and rural areas. The stark racial disparities of mass incarceration remained unchanged. Black people were still being held in Massachusetts state prisons at over seven times the rate of whites, and Latinx people at four times the rate of non-Latinx whites.

Articles:

• BU Today: Sociologist Jessica Simes’ New Book Explores the Toll of Mass Incarceration and Its Racial Disparities
• The Brink: BU’s 5 NSF Grant Winners Are Changing Conversations in Robotics, Computing, Mass Incarceration, Neurology, and More