Prison Populations: A Projection Model

Arnold Barnett
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Arnold Barnett: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Operations Research, 1987, vol. 35, issue 1, 18-34

Abstract: We propose a method for estimating prison populations under a variety of assumptions about sentencing policy and demographic structure. The approach builds on a familiar stochastic model of the individual criminal career. After a validation exercise involving Pennsylvania data, we use the model to make illustrative projections about Massachusetts, Utah and Florida. The results suggest that, while prison populations might stabilize everywhere during the early 1990s, only rarely will this situation signify an end to the growth in prison-capacity requirements.

Keywords: 221 prison population projections; 381; 385 prison populations; 572 criminal career patterns; sentencing strategy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1987
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