Achievement

Professor Steven Raphael (IGERT PI) has completed a study assessing the degree to which the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill since 1950 contributed to growth in the U.S. prison population through 2008. The study analyzes census data from 1950 through 2008. There is little evidence of a trans-institutionalization effect between 1950 and 1980, but significant effects for white males post 1980. In the aggregate, the shuttering of the nation's mental hospitals explains little of the growth in the incarceration rate. However, deinstitutionalization explains quite a bit of the increase in the incarceration rates of the severely mentally ill.