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Inmate labor fuels prisons. The incarcerated work in prison industries that collaborate with private corporations. Fair labor laws do not apply to prisons, where it is common for inmates to earn less than one dollar per hour. But involvement with the criminal justice system continues to shape and hinder the future employment and earnings of the formerly incarcerated long after they have been released. In this issue of RSF, edited by sociologist Sandra Susan Smith and legal scholar Jonathan Simon, an interdisciplinary group of scholars analyze how the criminal justice system acts as a de facto labor market institution by compelling or coercing labor from the justice-involved. 

The social and economic effects of criminal justice involvement are widespread, with almost seven million people under some form of direct supervision. The contributors to this issue examine how the criminal justice system affects the livelihood and families of both the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated. Cody Warner, Joshua Kaiser, and Jason Houle explore how “hidden sentences” --restricted access to voting rights, public housing, and professional licensing--negatively impact labor market outcomes for young adults with criminal records. Michele Cadigan and Garbriela Kirk look at the burden of court fees and fines, or legal financial obligations, that place a strain on the work commitments and resources of low-income people. Joe LaBriola sheds new light on how employment affects recidivism; he shows that parolees who find high-quality jobs, such as in the manufacturing industry, are less likely to return to prison than those employed in low-quality jobs. Noah Zatz and Michael Stoll demonstrate how the threat of imprisonment for nonpayment of child support coerces labor among noncustodial fathers, particularly African-American men. Allison Dwyer Emory and her coauthors show that previously incarcerated fathers are less likely to pay either formal or informal cash child support or offer in-kind assistance to their children’s mothers.

This issue of RSF is a timely contribution to the field of scholarly literature that illuminates the far and often destructive reach that the criminal justice system has on those whose lives it touches. It advances our understanding of how the system functions as a labor market institution and the price it extracts from those involved with it. 

The Credible Messenger Mentoring Initiative (CMMI), launched in New York City in 2012, is a transformative program where adults who had been in the justice system serve as mentors, role models, and life coaches for 16- to 24-year-olds. The program socializes and empowers these at-risk and formerly incarcerated youth offenders, diverting them from juvenile justice institutions and rehabilitation centers. It aims to build trust, deepen their ties to their community and family, and help them become peacemakers and role models for other youths.

Real Recognizes Real is the first in-depth study of the CMMI, focusing on the Washington, DC branch of the program, which is becoming a model for a new movement of anti-violent interventions. It shows the advantages of the CMMI being built on the love that members of a community have for one another rather than on outside intervention. The authors also explain how this state-run, non-profit program reduced recidivism rates and helped its participants, youth and mentors alike, develop more meaningful and lasting relationships.

Featuring interviews with youths and their mentors, Real Recognizes Real evaluates the successes, challenges, failures, and lessons of the CMMI, while emphasizing its value in the campaign for juvenile justice reform.

In the series Studies in Transgression

For over four decades, the US federal government has undertaken efforts to police and prosecute environmental crimes to protect public health and the natural environment. Yet, we still know very little about how US federal agencies have monitored and sanctioned water pollution violations and if these actions actually deter crime. In Rivers on Fire and Corporate Liars, Joshua Ozymy and Melissa Jarrell Ozymy examined over one thousand federal water pollution investigations and prosecutions undertaken by the US EPA and Department of Justice from 1983 to 2023 to answer these questions. Their analysis provides the most comprehensive empirical examination to date of how the criminal enforcement of water pollution has evolved over time, patterns in prosecutions, and how criminals were sanctioned. 

How the politics of gambling became snarled in disputes over race, power, and law enforcement.

Every day in the United States, people test their luck in numerous lotteries, from state-run games to massive programs like Powerball and Mega Millions. Yet few are aware that the origins of today’s lotteries can be found in an African American gambling economy that flourished in urban communities in the mid-twentieth century. In Running the Numbers, Matthew Vaz reveals how the politics of gambling became enmeshed in disputes over racial justice and police legitimacy.

As Vaz highlights, early urban gamblers favored low-stakes games built around combinations of winning numbers. When these games became one of the largest economic engines in nonwhite areas like Harlem and Chicago’s south side, police took notice of the illegal business—and took advantage of new opportunities to benefit from graft and other corrupt practices. Eventually, governments found an unusual solution to the problems of illicit gambling and abusive police tactics: coopting the market through legal state-run lotteries, which could offer larger jackpots than any underground game. By tracing this process and the tensions and conflicts that propelled it, Vaz brilliantly calls attention to the fact that, much like education and housing in twentieth-century America, the gambling economy has also been a form of disputed terrain upon which racial power has been expressed, resisted, and reworked.

How the politics of gambling became snarled in disputes over race, power, and law enforcement.

Every day in the United States, people test their luck in numerous lotteries, from state-run games to massive programs like Powerball and Mega Millions. Yet few are aware that the origins of today’s lotteries can be found in an African American gambling economy that flourished in urban communities in the mid-twentieth century. In Running the Numbers, Matthew Vaz reveals how the politics of gambling became enmeshed in disputes over racial justice and police legitimacy.

As Vaz highlights, early urban gamblers favored low-stakes games built around combinations of winning numbers. When these games became one of the largest economic engines in nonwhite areas like Harlem and Chicago’s south side, police took notice of the illegal business—and took advantage of new opportunities to benefit from graft and other corrupt practices. Eventually, governments found an unusual solution to the problems of illicit gambling and abusive police tactics: coopting the market through legal state-run lotteries, which could offer larger jackpots than any underground game. By tracing this process and the tensions and conflicts that propelled it, Vaz brilliantly calls attention to the fact that, much like education and housing in twentieth-century America, the gambling economy has also been a form of disputed terrain upon which racial power has been expressed, resisted, and reworked.