After President Trump blamed California state officials for not doing enough to fight and prevent wildfires, civil servants seem to be fed up. Though often understood as emotionless state bureaucrats, frontline workers of the state — from firefighters to social workers — must often deal with suffering, emergencies, and disasters in the everyday operations of their agencies. Social science research helps us understand how state actors manage these roles and maintain their own emotional wellbeing.

The work of state agents entails balancing institutional rules and scarce state resources. Their everyday decisions are thus an essential component of administering and implementing public policy. Because they control the distribution of services, state officials can become policymakers with considerable discretion in the daily implementation of state activities. Their work not only influences how state operations impact citizens’ lives, but it also shapes citizens’ perceptions of state legitimacy.

• Michael Lipsky. 2010. Street-Level Bureaucracy, 30th Anniversary Edition: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Service. Russell Sage Foundation.
• Bernardo Zacka. 2017. When the State Meets the Street: Public Service and Moral Agency. Harvard University Press.
• Amy E. Lerman and Vesla M. Weaver. 2014. Arresting Citizenship: The Democratic Consequences of American Crime Control. University of Chicago Press.

Workers’ affective lives — their emotional challenges and commitments to institutions — impact the functioning of organizations. Unlike many politicians, scholars, or journalists, state bureaucrats have everyday contact with adversity, social problems, and vulnerable populations. For state officials who interact with the public, working with clients can be emotionally draining and even physically harmful. Civil servants suffer emotional and psychological distress as a result of their daily roles. The consequences of exhausting interactions are harmful to the purposes of the organization, as — in the process of routine operations — bureaucrats may develop special preferences, antipathies, and discrimination against their clients.

• Robert K. Merton. 1939. “Bureaucratic Structure and Personality.” Social Forces 18: 560-568.
• Charles R. Figley. 2013. Compassion Fatigue: Coping with Secondary Traumatic Stress Disorder in Those who Treat the Traumatized. Routledge.
• Joe Soss, Richard C. Fording, and  Sanford F. Schram. 2011. Disciplining the Poor: Neoliberal Paternalism and the Persistent Power of Race. University of Chicago Press.

State agents thus perform a complex balancing act, both for society and for themselves. Instead of using the stereotype of bureaucrats as vile and insensitive, public policy decisions must also consider the operations of organizational behavior and the struggles of bureaucrats in providing state services.

After years of debate, the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) — which sets minimum requirements for caseworkers handling state child custody proceedings involving Native children — was recently ruled unconstitutional by a Texas federal judge. The judge argued that ICWA violates constitutional rights to Equal Protection because it “elevates a child’s race over their best interest” — despite the fact that Native children are actually citizens of federally recognized tribes. Social science research helps us understand the historical context necessitating ICWA’s creation, with respect to the problematic history of child removal from Native communities as shaped by racialized, gendered, and cultural ideas.

The ICWA was enacted in 1978, a time when Native children were being removed from their homes and placed in foster care at staggering numbers under the guise of protecting children. At that time, 25-35% of Native children were removed from their homes by state child welfare or by private adoption companies. And the majority (about 85%) of these children were placed outside of their families and communities, even when relatives were willing to take them. Today, despite the minimal protections offered by the ICWA, Minnesota places more Native children in foster care than any other state, making up 20% of children in the system.

• Lila J. George. 1997. “Why the Need for the Indian Child Welfare Act?” Journal of Multicultural Social Work 5(3): 165-175.
• Margaret D. Jacobs. 2014. A Generation Removed: The Fostering and Adoption of Indigenous Children in the Postwar World. University of Nebraska Press.

The ICWA’s creation and implementation has not only been a response to child-removal through adoption, however. Even earlier, Native children were sent to government or Christian-run boarding schools where teachers forced children to abandon their distinct tribal cultures — they cut Native children’s hair, did not allow them to speak their native languages or participate in cultural practices, and enforced strict discipline through corporal punishment. The boarding school era prevented generations of Native people from learning (and passing on) parenting tools. This separation of families, along with the disruption to Native cultural and spiritual practices, has been linked to symptoms similar to post-traumatic stress disorder, increased exposure to physical violence, and substance abuse in Native communities.

• Brenda J. Child. Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900-1940. University of Nebraska Press.
• Catherine Burnette. 2015. “Historical Oppression and Intimate Partner Violence Experienced by Indigenous Women in the United States: Understanding Connections.” Social Service Review 89(3): 531-563.

The removal of Native children is also couched in deep-set racialized, gendered, and cultural notions of family, specifically the white middle class ideal of the nuclear family, characterized by two married parents and children. Conversely, non-Native supporters of these adoption practices often relied on stereotypes of Native women as sexualized, unmarried, and thus unfit, which pathologized Native families as neglectful. They have also argued that each child’s best interests should be considered on an individual basis, rathering than acknowledging what tribes see as the importance of culture and identity, tribal rights, and belonging. In other words, supporters of Native adoption saw “disadvantaged” Native children that needed to be “rescued” by individual acts of goodwill (from white, middle class Americans).

• Margaret D. Jacobs. 2013. “Remembering the ‘Forgotten Child’: The American Indian Child Welfare Crisis.” American Indian Quarterly
• Dwanna Robertson. 2015. “Invisibility in the Color-Blind Era: Examining Legitimized Racism Against Indigenous Peoples.” American Indian Quarterly 39(2): 113-153.
• Kathryn A. Sweeney and Rachel L. Pollack. 2017. “Colorblind Individualism, Color Consciousness, and the Indian Child Welfare Act: Representations of Adoptee Best Interest in Newspaper Coverage of the Baby Veronica Case.” The Sociological Quarterly 58(4): 701-720.

So what will legal reconsideration of the Indian Child Welfare Act bring? Many tribes fear that the Texas ruling sets a dangerous precedent that could dismantle the federal laws put in place to correct historical injustices like the boarding school system. Other tribal leaders see the ruling as an attempt to destroy their right to political and cultural survival through their children, while simultaneously compromising efforts to heal from the wrongdoings inflicted upon tribal communities. In the context of the current political division over the treatment of immigrant children separated from their parents at the U.S. border, such concerns warrant serious attention.

Politicians, pundits, and critics in Germany, England, and the Netherlands have recently advocated for harsher restrictions on migrants’ access to social assistance in their countries. This has led scholars to evaluate whether increased immigration is eroding historically strong support for welfare in Europe.

Earlier in the decade, the answer seemed clear. Drawing on basic public opinion data from various European countries, scholars found that rising immigration levels preceded a spike in favorability for restrictive welfare laws. More recent and sophisticated analyses, however, suggest that a rise in restrictive welfare attitudes is not directly connected to increasing immigration. Rather, this relationship appears to be better explained by a combination of factors such as national economic conditions, political ideology, individuals’ self-interest, and prejudice towards racial and ethnic minorities.

• David Brady and Ryan Finnigan. 2014. “Does Immigration Undermine Public Support for Social Policy?” American Sociological Review 79(1): 17-42.
• Jan Mewes and Steffen Mau. 2013. “Globalization, Socio-Economic Status and Welfare Chauvinism: European Perspectives on Attitudes toward the Exclusion of Immigrants.” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 54(3): 228-45.
• Maureen A. Eger and Nate Breznau. 2017. “Immigration and the Welfare State: A Cross-Regional Analysis of European Welfare Attitudes.” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 58(5): 440-63.
• Alexander W. Schmidt-Catran and Dennis C. Spies. 2016. “Immigration and Welfare Support in Germany.” American Sociological Review 81(2): 242-261.
• Daniel Degen, Theresa Kuhn, and Wouter van der Brug. 2018. “Granting Immigrants Access to Social Benefits? How Self-Interest Influences Support for Welfare State Restrictiveness.” Journal of European Social Policy 1(1): 1-18.

This work shows that social attitudes about welfare are complex and linked to a variety of factors. Though critics of immigration in Europe have been vocal, it is unclear exactly whether and how attitudes about immigration and migrants relate to beliefs about welfare.

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a recurrent and divisive topic in international headlines. In the last year, the Trump administration has positioned itself as a firm supporter of Israel by recognizing Jerusalem as its capital and cutting aid to Palestinian territories. These moves have drawn praise and criticism in the United States and abroad, with commentators speculating what this might mean for an eventual peace treaty. Sociology can help explain why this conflict has persisted for so long and how a breakthrough might finally be achieved.

When violence is directed toward a group rather than an individual, suffering gains a social dimension. An identity of victimhood is constructed. Not all tragic pasts lead to this label; rather, groups that experienced violence and groups in power negotiate the use of the term, “victim.” This identity is particularly strong among Palestinians and Israelis, with both groups highly conscious of the historical and contemporary harm they have suffered from the other. Collective victimhood functions to maintain a group’s moral self-image and to bolster in-group solidarity. It can also justify violence against the out-group motivated by “self-defense.”

• Jeffrey Alexander. 2012. Trauma: A Social Theory. Malden, MA: Polity Press.
• Johanna R. Vollhardt. 2009. “The Role of Victim Beliefs in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Risk or Potential for Peace?” Peace and Conflict 15(1): 135-159.

Victim status is projected to third-parties to win sympathy and support. Resources for humanitarian aid are limited and are generally distributed to groups that the international community considers to be the primary or sole victim of a conflict, especially in recent decades. Accordingly, groups fight for control of the victim identity. This process, known as competitive victimhood, involves each side claiming that it has suffered more unjust violence than the other group. Competitive victimhood perpetuates the victim identity, which can make reconciliation more difficult.

• Masi Noor, Nurit Shnabel, Samer Halabi, and Arie Nadler. 2012. “When Suffering Begets Suffering: The Psychology of Competitive Victimhood Between Adversarial Groups in Violent Conflicts.” Personality and Social Psychology Review 16(4): 351-374.
• Laleh Khalili. 2007. “Heroic and Tragic Pasts: Mnemonic Narratives in the Palestinian Refugee Camps.” Critical Sociology 33: 731-759.

Recognizing the negative impact of competitive victimhood can suggest a path toward peace. Adopting a common victimhood identity reduces competitive victimhood and increases willingness to forgive. One experiment showed that Israelis express less support for aggressive policies against the Palestinians if they read a narrative emphasizing suffering on both sides. The effectiveness of individual interventions is suggestive, but large-scale reconciliation requires the social construction of a common victimhood identity in public discourse.

• Levi Adelman, Bernhard Leidner, Helin Unal, Eman Nahhas, and Nurit Shnabel. 2016. “A Whole Other Story: Inclusive Victimhood Narratives Reduce Competitive Victimhood and Intergroup Hostility.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 42(10): 1416-1430.
• John D. Brewer. 2010. Peace Processes: A Sociological Approach. Cambridge: Polity.

Competitive victimhood results from the black-and-white categories used to distribute blame and sympathy in inter-group conflicts. Moving beyond this dichotomy may improve the odds of eventually securing peace between Israelis and Palestinians, as well as solving other intractable disputes.

This post was created in collaboration with the Minnesota Journalism Center. 

“A Way Out of the Immigration Crisis.” “Like it or Not, Immigrant Children are Our Future.” “Trump Talks Tough on Immigration in Nevada but it Could Backfire.”

All three of these news headlines were published by mainstream news outlets in the United States in September 2018. All three portray immigration in a negative light. While much news and media coverage across the globe portrays immigration negatively, researchers who study this area also identify media outlets that include more positive coverage. 

One thing scholars have found is that immigration coverage has increased rapidly since 2004. In U.S. coverage, there is a heavy focus on “immigration reform” and “tougher border control” as solutions to the immigration “problem.” Across the pond in the United Kingdom, polls have ranked immigration as one of citizens’ top concerns, with coverage of immigration being overwhelmingly negative and centered on conflict through utilization of crime frames and discussion of immigrants as “illegal” or “failed.”

• Sei-hill Kim, John P. Carvalho, Andrew G. Davis, and Amanda M. Mullins. 2011. “The View of the Border: News Framing of the Definition, Causes, and Solutions to Illegal Immigration.” Mass Communication and Society 14(3): 292–314.
• David Smith and David Deacon. 2018. “Immigration and the British News Media: Continuity or Change?” Sociology Compass 12(9): 1-13.
• Jakob-Moritz Eberl, Christine E. Meltzer, Tobias Heidenreich, Beatrice Herrero, Nora Theorin, Fabienne Lind, Rosa Berganza, Hajo G. Boomgaarden, Christian Schemer, and Jesper Strömbäck. 2018. “The European Media Discourse on Immigration and its Effects: a Literature Review.” Annals of the International Communication Association 42(3): 207–223.

But not all publications discuss immigration in the same way. For example, scholars have found that African-American media outlets publish immigration stories with racial frames that depict immigrants as allies, while other major mainstream media outlets frequently utilize crime frames that discuss the legal status of immigrants.

• Irene Browne, Natalie Delia Deckard, and Cassaundra Rodriguez. 2016. “Different Game, Different Frame?: Black Counterdiscourses and Depictions of Immigration in Atlanta’s African-American and Mainstream Press.” The Sociological Quarterly 57(3): 520–543.

Research also shows suggests that the conflict-oriented news coverage of immigration contributes to polarized public opinions about immigration policies in digital spaces as well as comment sections of mainstream news sites. Conversely, social and mobile media in Australia has been used as a platform for asylum-seekers in detention to share their experiences with the public directly. Journalists and citizens alike have collaborated with detained asylum-seekers to create journalistic narratives that raise awareness of human rights violations unfolding in offshore detainment centers. Though not embraced by all consumers, such stories about immigration appear to cultivate expressions of empathy from audiences.

• Giovanna Dell’Orto and Vicki L. Birchfield (Eds.). 2013. Reporting at the Southern Borders: Journalism and Public Debates on Immigration in the US and the EU. New York: Routledge.
• Marijn van Klingeren, Hajo G. Boomgaarden, and Claes de Vreese. 2017. “Will Conflict Tear Us Apart? The Effects of Conflict and Valenced Media Messages on Polarizing Attitudes Toward EU Immigration and Border Control.” Public Opinion Quarterly 81(2): 543–563.
• Maria Rae, Rosa Holman, and Amy Nethery. 2018. “Self-represented Witnessing: The Use of Social Media by Asylum Seekers in Australia’s Offshore Immigration Detention Centres.” Media, Culture & Society 40(4): 479–495.

People invent words and definitions to help navigate the world around them. Once created, such labels can have monumental impacts. The word “genocide” is one example of a term that holds meaning for victims, perpetrators, and those who watch violence unfold. Over the past few years, debates have raged as to whether or not to call the Burmese state’s violence against the Rohingya “genocide.” Such debates often privilege the label, rather than focusing on the everyday violence experienced by civilians. Sociologists seek to understand the meaning, use, and consequences of labels like genocide.

Individuals and groups use institutions to construct consensus about labels. But people use terms in different ways, and labels often change in meaning over time. The term “genocide” was first coined by a lawyer, Raphael Lemkin, in the aftermath of the Holocaust. The United Nations adopted this term and formalized genocide as a crime in 1951, but the meaning of genocide continues to be contested. Some academics, for example, advocate for the inclusion of political groups as targets for genocide in addition to collectivities that are already included, like ethnic or religious groups.

• Howard Becker. 1963. Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. London: Free Press of Glencoe.
• Dirk Moses. 2010. “Raphael Lemkin, Culture, and the Concept of Genocide.” Pp. 19-41 in The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Philip Spencer. 2012. Genocide Since 1945. London: Routledge

Debates about labels have real effects. In the case of genocide, such implications are most directly felt by populations affected by violence. Victims can feel that their loss is recognized and mourned when appropriate labels are used, while an insufficient label may promote impunity for past crimes. As some theorists argue that an acknowledgement of past wrongdoing is central to healing, the use of fitting labels takes on an even more practical importance.

• Jeffrey Alexander, Ron Eyerman, Bernhard Giesen, Neil J. Smelser, and Piotr Sztompka. 2004. Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press
• Hannah Arendt. 1958. The Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Despite these important considerations, some scholars and activists express concern that focusing on labels does more harm than good. The label of “genocide,” though critically important to survivors and advocates, does not come with legal obligations to intervene. While policymakers and activists discuss the relevance of the term “genocide” in Burma, atrocity crimes continue to unfold. As such, some scholars argue that the social importance of labels can distract from the immediate needs of victims of violence. From this vantage point, scholarly and advocacy attention is best directed towards serving the needs of those impacted by violence.

• Dirk Moses. 2012. “The Canadian Museum for Human Rights: The ‘Uniqueness of the Holocaust’ and the Question of Genocide.” Journal of Genocide Research 14(2): 215-238.
• Mahmood Mamdani. 2007. “The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency.” London Review of Books 29(5): 5-8.

More and more Americans have begun observing Indigenous Peoples Day, at least in part to push back against national narratives of “discovery” associated with Christopher Columbus and his commemoration. While a relatively recent development in the United States, other nations of the Americas officially acknowledged the importance of their Indigenous heritage for much longer. For example, in Mexico, Día de la Raza or “The Day of the Race” was officially recognized back in 1928 and was part of a larger national project that emphasized that all Mexicans share a history of racial and cultural mixing — known as mestizaje — since the coming of the Spanish. Sociological research highlights how this recognition of Indigenous people as integral to the formation of the nation has actually had mixed consequences for Indigenous peoples and cultures of Mexico.

The notion of mestizaje emphasized that all Mexicans were fundamentally “mixed” individuals, or “mestizos.” It was adopted by the State in an effort to promote inclusion and national cohesion across racial lines — including Indigenous peoples — and even resulted in the removal of racial categories from the census (after 1921). In this spirit, the Mexican government sought to “improve” Indigenous individuals through education, social integration, and economic development, assimilating them into the newly defined mestizo nation. While some benefited, some lost their language and cultural identity, and many others, especially those with darker skin, faced further marginalization and found themselves pushed underground.

• Christina A. Sue. 2013. Land of the Cosmic Race: Race Mixture, Racism, and Blackness in Mexico. Oxford University Press.
• Graziella Moraes Silva and Emiko Saldívar. 2018. “Comparing Ideologies of Racial Mixing in Latin America: Brazil And Mexico.” Sociologia & Antropologia 8(2): 427-456.
• Edward Telles. 2014. Pigmentocracies: Ethnicity, Race, and Color in Latin America. The University of North Carolina Press.

Due to internal and external political pressures in the 1990s, the Mexican government abandoned its assimilationist policies and began instead to protect and promote the languages and cultures of Indigenous peoples. These shifts appear to have contributed to greater ethnic pride and greater likelihood to self-identify as Indigenous, especially for more educated, wealthier, or urban populations. However, skin color continues to carry economic and social weight in Mexico. Non-white Mexicans tend to have lower levels of education and employment and are more likely to live in poverty than their lighter-skinned peers.

• Andrés Villarreal. 2010. “Stratification by Skin Color in Contemporary Mexico.” American Sociological Review 75(5): 652-678.
• Andrés Villarreal. 2014. “Ethnic Identification and Its Consequences for Measuring Inequality in Mexico” American Sociological Review 79(4): 775-806.
• René Flores and Edward Telles. 2012. “Social Stratification in Mexico: Disentangling Color, Ethnicity, and Class.” American Sociological Review 77(3): 486-494.

So, while Mexico may still celebrate a day to acknowledge its mixed racial heritage, it is worth wondering if there might be other, better ways to recognize and address the challenges that actual Indigenous people in the country face on a day to day basis.

The newest Apple Watch can now warn users when it detects an abnormal heartbeat. While Apple may be on the cutting edge, many people have been using apps to track their food intake and exercise for some time. Social science research demonstrates that health-tracking technology reflects larger social forces and institutions.

These health-tracking apps are part of a larger trend in American medicine that researchers call “biomedicalization,” which includes a greater focus on health (as opposed to illness), risk management, surveillance, and includes a variety of technological advances.

• Adele E. Clarke, Janet K. Shim, Laura Mamo, Jennifer Ruth Fosket, and Jennfier R. Fishman. 2003. “Biomedicalization: Technoscientific Transformations of Health, Illness, and U.S. Biomedicine.” American Sociological Review 68: 161–94.
• David Armstrong. 1995. “The Rise of Surveillance Medicine.” Sociology of Health and Illness 17: 393–404.

Benefits of using these apps include empowering patients and not having to rely on doctors for knowledge about one’s body, which — as many of the apps advertise — may save time and money by potentially allowing them to avoid doctor visits. However, self-tracking may put more onus on the individual to maintain their health on their own, leading to blame for those who do not take advantage of this technology. Further, using this technology could lead to strain in doctor-patient relationships if doctors believe patients are undermining their authority.

• Deborah Lupton. 2016. The Quantified Self: A Sociology of Self-Tracking. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
• Deborah Lupton and Annemarie Jutel. 2015. “‘It’s Like Having a Physician in Your Pocket!’ A Critical Analysis of Self-Diagnosis Smartphone Apps.” Social Science & Medicine 133: 128–35.

As more and more Americans use smartphones, the promise of digital technology, including health-tracking apps, for reducing existing health disparities grows. However, the Pew Research Center shows large income and educational gaps still exist in smartphone use, meaning the health benefits of using such technology — as well as potential downfalls — for the greater population, may be a long way off.

Unaccompanied minors have been migrating to the United States from Central America for decades, but media coverage of this harrowing journey rarely focuses on the reasons behind migration. Though violence and economic peril tend to drive these migration patterns, the journey from Central America is dangerous itself, and the backgrounds of child migrants are not always well understood. Fortunately, sociological research on migration can provide context on the difficulty of the decisions and experiences involved in migration.

Structural conditions, like violence or poverty, do not alone predict unaccompanied child migration. Recent analysis finds that when a parent migrates, their child is more likely to follow them — especially compared to children who do not have parents that migrated. Indeed, unaccompanied migrant children are most likely to migrate the same year as their parents. Gender is also a factor — girls are less likely than boys to migrate when they had parents who migrated, and even less likely when these were unauthorized trips.

• Katharine M. Donato and Blake Sisk. 2015. “Children’s Migration to the United States from Mexico and Central America: Evidence from the Mexican and Latin American Migration Projects.” Journal on Migration and Human Security 3(1): 58-79.
• Lilian Chavez and Cecilia Menjívar. 2010. “Children without Borders: A Mapping of the Literature on Unaccompanied Migrant Children to the United States.” Migraciones Internacionales 5(3): 71-111.

Some unaccompanied minors make this dangerous journey in order to flee life-threatening gang violence at home, which leads many children to claim asylum or special immigrant status upon arrival in the United States. Upon arrival, however, they may be placed in a detention center or be deported back to their countries of origin. Further, to cover costs for the journey to the United States, Central American families gather their money and take on debt. And this all may be for naught if their child is apprehended and deported back to their country of origin.

• Jorge A. Bustamante. 2011. “Extreme Vulnerability of Migrants: The Cases of the United States and Mexico” Migraciones Internacionales 6(20): 97-118.
• Cecilia Menjívar and Krista M. Perreira. 2017. “Undocumented and Unaccompanied: Children of Migration in the European Union and the United States.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

This past August, the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, a labor union for prisoners, began a nationwide strike to protest against inhumane conditions, the use of solitary confinement, and precarious work in U.S prisons. Fighting prison conditions and labor precarity has been a long-standing struggle for prisoners in the United States and around the world, and social science research explains the dynamics underlying this struggle.

As ‘total institutions” prisons provide poor substitutes of basic needs, or limited access to basic items, services, and comforts like hygiene items, clean clothing, nutritious food, education, and health care services.  Consequently, prisons end up depriving inmates of their wellbeing, autonomy, sense of self-worth, and control over their fates. In the United States, the indignities of prison conditions range from major maltreatments, such as the abuse of long-term solitary confinement, to minor cruelties, such as restricting the use of showers and toilet paper (imagine being limited to just one roll per month), in overcrowded facilities.

• Erving Goffman. 1961.  Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books.
• Keramet Reiter. 2016.  23/7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary Confinement. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Heather Ann Thompson. 2017. Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy. New York: Pantheon.

The specific conditions of prison labor reflect long-standing contradictions. On the one hand, social science evidence suggests that providing jobs to inmates has a positive effect and can reduce their involvement in future crime activities. On the other hand, prison labor has also led to abuse and exploitation. Correctional facilities use prison labor to serve private industries, to perform cleaning and maintenance functions within facilities, or even to repair public water tanks and fight wildfires. Prison labor has also served as an instrument of economic policy in the labor market. In the 1990s, for example, rates of unemployment declined when a massive number of able-bodied working age men went to U.S. prisons.

• Christopher Uggen. 2000. “Work as a Turning Point in the Life Course of Criminals: A Duration Model of Age, Employment, and Recidivism.” American Sociological Review 65(4): 529-546.
• Phillip Goodman. 2012. “‘Another Second Chance’: Rethinking Rehabilitation through the Lens of California’s Prison Fire Camps.” Social Problems 59(4): 437-458.
• Bruce Western and Katherine Beckett. 1999. “How Unregulated is the US Labor Market? The Penal System as a Labor Market Institution.” American Journal of Sociology 104(4): 1030-60.
• Joshua Page and Joe Soss. In Progress. Preying on the Poor: Tough on Crime as Revenue Racket. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Imprisonment often has devastating consequences for inmates, their families, communities, and society at large. Even though certain policies like prison labor may involve potential benefits, their positive effects only occur when there is a genuine effort to achieve inmates’ social inclusion. Inmates’ struggles to achieve effective changes in their living conditions therefore require sustained and special attention from the public and policy makers.