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Research Article
Open Access

Institutional Castling: Military Enlistment and Mass Incarceration in the United States

Bryan L. Sykes, Amy Kate Bailey
RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences March 2020, 6 (1) 30-54; DOI: https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2020.6.1.02
Bryan L. Sykes
aAssistant professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society and Sociology and Public Health, by courtesy, at the University of California, Irvine
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Amy Kate Bailey
bAssociate professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Illinois–Chicago and visiting faculty affiliate at the University of Washington’s Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology
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Abstract

The military is a major state provider of employment, occupational training, and educational subsidies. Yet military downsizing and its increased selectivity during penal expansion may have cleaved off employment opportunities for disadvantaged men. We show how institutional castling—the shifting prominence of competing institutions in the lives of specific demographic groups—has affected the underlying risk of military employment and penal confinement. Black veterans who have dropped out of high school are less likely to be incarcerated than their nonveteran counterparts, and declines in the employment rates of military servicemembers with less than a high school education are associated with large increases in incarceration rates. The military’s critical role in providing institutional protection from the penal system has eroded for young, undereducated African American men.

  • institutional castling
  • incarceration
  • military
  • employment
  • race
  • © 2020 Russell Sage Foundation. Sykes, Bryan L., and Amy Kate Bailey. 2020. “Institutional Castling: Military Enlistment and Mass Incarceration in the United States.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 6(1): 30–54. DOI: 10.7758/RSF.2020.6.1.02. We thank Sandra Susan Smith, Jonathan Simon, Sheldon Danziger, Elizabeth Ananat, Emily Marshall, Christine Percheski, Becky Pettit, Hana Shepherd, LaTonya Trotter, three anonymous reviewers, and participants of the Russell Sage Foundation’s Criminal Justice System as a Labor Market Institution meeting for their time and helpful comments on previous versions of this manuscript. We are also indebted to Josh Seim and Joshua A. Kaiser for pointing us to additional readings and various legal codes, respectively. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America. Direct correspondence to: Bryan L. Sykes at blsykes{at}uci.edu, Department of Criminology, Law and Society, 3317 Social Ecology II, Irvine, CA 92697; and Amy Kate Bailey at akbailey{at}uic.edu.

Open Access Policy: RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences is an open access journal. This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences: 6 (1)
RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences
Vol. 6, Issue 1
1 Mar 2020
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Institutional Castling: Military Enlistment and Mass Incarceration in the United States
Bryan L. Sykes, Amy Kate Bailey
RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences Mar 2020, 6 (1) 30-54; DOI: 10.7758/RSF.2020.6.1.02

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Institutional Castling: Military Enlistment and Mass Incarceration in the United States
Bryan L. Sykes, Amy Kate Bailey
RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences Mar 2020, 6 (1) 30-54; DOI: 10.7758/RSF.2020.6.1.02
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  • Article
    • Abstract
    • LABOR MARKET STRUCTURE, THE MILITARY, AND PENAL SYSTEM EXPOSURE
    • INSTITUTIONAL CASTLING: RACE, LABOR STRATIFICATION, AND THE MILITARY AND PENAL SYSTEMS
    • DATA AND CODING
    • METHODS
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Keywords

  • institutional castling
  • incarceration
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  • employment
  • race

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