A cross‐section of 1980 US data on the prison population and its rate of inflow is examined. Regression analysis is used to investigate the impact of prison overcrowding, race, crime and unemployment on the above variables. Racial composition and overcrowding are found to have significant...

Economists have, in the last 20 years, made many contributions to the study of the deterrent effect of sanctions on criminals — these are surveyed in Brief & Fienberg (1980), Blumstein & Cohen (1978), Tullock (1974), Palmer (1977) and Taylor (1978). A considerable amount of the empirical work...