“the Economy, Stupid!” How Growth and Recession Drive the Incarceration of Poor People

Historically, state-driven mass incarceration of groups of poor people has a complicated relationship with violence. As Loïc Wacquant argued, violence is often the rationale to push for more imprisonment. Conversely, the so-called “penalisation of precariousness” is a form of state violence. The often-existing trend toward punishing the poor begs the question: what drives the tendency to incarcerate poor people? One theoretical frame developed in the early 20th century was the Rusche-Kirchheimer (1939) hypothesis. They argue that a rise in surplus populations leads to increased imprisonment rates. This would mean that low unemployment and high demand for labour reduce incarceration levels, and recessions with high unemployment and reduced job opportunities lead to increased incarceration of poor people.

We test the Rusche-Kirchheimer thesis empirically, hypothesising that the intensity of the imprisonment of people denoted as “vagrants” was driven by local labour market surpluses. The analyses are based on historical annual data in Belgium on vagrancy-related trials and convictions, combined with demographic and labour market information from eight censuses conducted between 1900 and 1991. The results show that throughout the twentieth century, local law enforcement exhibited less leniency towards vagrants, and judges were stricter in imposing sentences for vagrancy during periods of pronounced labour surpluses. Moreover, the findings suggest that the emergence of the welfare state mitigated the impact of labour surpluses on the intensity with which vagrants were arrested and prosecuted, possibly indicating that punitive measures and welfare state approaches may substitute for one another. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the practice of incarcerating poor people in labour colonies may no longer have been used as a strategic tool by governments to reduce the presence of people who are wandering.