Collective Outbursts, Politics, and Punitive Resources: Towards a Political Sociology of Spending on Social Control.” Social Forces 77:1497–1523

This study tests racial threat and political explanations for yearly fluctuations in per capita spending on corrections since the early 1950s. Racial threats indicated by riots or by the presence of nonwhites do not account for changes in imprisonment rates, yet both threat conditions explain subsequent shifts in total spending on jails and prisons. Increases in the political strength of the Republican Party, past breakdowns in the family, and growth in the tax base lead to greater spending on corrections as well, but neither unemployment nor economic inequality are associated with these outlays. In comparison to findings about the determinants of imprisonment rates, the results of this study show that spending on punishment is far more responsive to the mals politics of racial threat. Do underclass riots and other threats to public order generate greater efforts to increase the strength of punitive agencies? This question is intriguing because many theorists believe that the presence of a menacing underclass leads to repression. The Jack of evidence for an association between racial threat and punitive outcomes in advanced societies suggests that these relationships require additional study. Findings (Isaac & Kelly 1981; Jennings 1983) support historical claims (Piven & Cloward 1971) that attempts to buy off the poor with increased *We thank Pam Jackson for her comments on a prior draft and Lowell Hargens and other colleagues at Ohio State for their reactions to an oral presentation. We are grateful to Larry Isaac, who supplied the riot data, and Sue Lindgren of the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, for sending us the data on correctiona