Invisible Men: Mass Incarceration and the Myth of Black Progress

by Becky Pettit

For African American men without a high school diploma, being in prison or jail is more common than being employed—a sobering reality that calls into question post-Civil Rights era social gains. Nearly 70 percent of young black men will be imprisoned at some point in their lives, and poor black men with low levels of education make up a disproportionate share of incarcerated Americans. In Invisible Men, sociologist Becky Pettit demonstrates another vexing fact of mass incarceration: most national surveys do not account for prison inmates, a fact that results in a misrepresentation of U.S. political, economic, and social conditions in general and black progress in particular. Invisible Men provides an eye-opening examination of how mass incarceration has concealed decades of racial inequality.

Pettit marshals a wealth of evidence correlating the explosion in prison growth with the disappearance of millions of black men into the American penal system. She shows that, because prison inmates are not included in most survey data, statistics that seemed to indicate a narrowing black-white racial gap—on educational attainment, work force participation, and earnings—instead fail to capture persistent racial, economic, and social disadvantage among African Americans. Federal statistical agencies, including the U.S. Census Bureau, collect surprisingly little information about the incarcerated, and inmates are not included in household samples in national surveys. As a result, these men are invisible to most mainstream social institutions, lawmakers, and nearly all social science research that isn't directly related to crime or criminal justice. Since merely being counted poses such a challenge, inmates' lives—including their family background, the communities they come from, or what happens to them after incarceration—are even more rarely examined. And since correctional budgets provide primarily for housing and monitoring inmates, with little left over for job training or rehabilitation, a large population of young men are not only invisible to society while in prison but also ill-equipped to participate upon release.

Invisible Men provides a vital reality check for social researchers, lawmakers, and anyone who cares about racial equality. The book shows that more than a half century after the first civil rights legislation, the dismal fact of mass incarceration inflicts widespread and enduring damage by undermining the fair allocation of public resources and political representation, by depriving the children of inmates of their parents' economic and emotional participation, and, ultimately, by concealing African American disadvantage from public view.

Genres: Nonfiction, Academic, Sociology

156 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2012

Reviews

[Samara 1234 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Current large scale surveys systematically exclude inmates from sample surveys, thus distorting all social facts we can attempt to make about the American public!!

[Alisha · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book contends with the counting problem associated with incarceration and how that influences our demographic understandings of life outcomes for the Black population in the U.S. This book contends that the contemporary criminal justice system creates a specific type of social exclusion that, in its subtlety, retrenches many of the rights of citizenship to core minority populations in the U.S., namely Black men. Additionally, how we collect data about different types of populations in the U.S. can influence our understanding of how those social groups behave and participate in society. Using Black men as an example, when we account for the under-representation of the prison population or those who have a history of incarceration, we find that the idea of "Black Progress" might actually be a myth. The social and policy implications of this are immense.

[Lawrence Grandpre · Rating 5 out of 5]

Goodreads strikes again.

Another excellent book with a less than 4 star rating. My guess is her findings are hard to swallow, but they resonates very well with what the black masses have been telling folks for decades, most of the violence of poverty and the war on drugs has been invisablized in the statistical metrics aiming to reflect Black life. Many people get this when it comes to unemployment rates, it only counts folks seeking work who can't find it, thus undercounting folks who have given up on finding work. This book just shows this is happening for Black folks on almost all metrics of success, not just incarcerated people not being counted, but poor men unstable lifestyles making them hard to sample, undercounting their suffering on nearly all metrics. I am not qualified to comment on her statistical methodology is detail, but just knowing the massive rates of unreported assault and crime against Black men, it seems like systemically undercounting on graduation rates, electoral turnout. Some stats are very harrowing, with over 60% lifetime incarceration probably for black men without a high school degree during periods of highest incarceration and mortality for black men being LOWER in jail then upon release in many poor black neighborhoods. My guess is she is by proxy attack some academics and political folks vested in the inevitable progress, arch of history is long but bends towards justice crowd, but also, these findings are just kinda sad, and that i impacting the rating. Just read the book and grapple with what you know being wrong. It's ok that the text doesn't have clean, happy solution, besides better data collection, which she might oversell has having a political positive effect on changing policy outcomes downstream. She does mention it impacting federal flows of money to cities and states by undercounting poor black men. I believe the "limited" successes of American Rescue Plan Act money going directly to cities shows the value of accounting for the needs of cities being accounted for and giving them money directly, but this is bigger than undercounting and begs question of political strategy, states Bogarding poverty program money away from cities as they became Black run in the 70s and the nonprofit/foundation control over addressing critical issues and their lack of democratic control, but that's a topic for another review.

I heard about this book when it came out and then never heard of it again. Sad that is become my metric of whether a book might be good; if I STOP hearing about it and the NPR/Academic classes don't love it might be good. I wish I would have read it sooner.

[Dylan Matthews · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love some descriptive data. I’m going to try to work through some of the galleys I’ve acquired over the years, so as to thin my bookshelves, and this was a fine start. The IRS data revolution has made some of the pleas for better sourcing in this seem dated, but it’s still revelatory to rethink some standard data series with incarceration in mind as an important form of sample bias.

[Eva Forslund · Rating 3 out of 5]

not very captivating, a little unfocused. good facts, easily read, important subject, and a new take. probably could've given it 4 out of 5

[Alexis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fascinating and important topic just poorly written

[Lance Eaton · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is a fascinating look at the element of incarceration among African Americans (particularly male) and how because of demographics gathering such as the census and polling work, has left a wide gap about the nature of racial progress over the last 60 years. The result is a stark difference in perception between what is reported to have occurred in terms of racial progress and how things really are. Pettit traces connects these changes to the rise of the prison industrial complex and its explosion since the 1970s and 1980s. The disproportionate amount of African Americans in prison has left them unaccounted in a variety of other data for different reasons and thus, hide the actual disparities. The result is political action and choices that do not necessarily make up for the continued problems created through historically institutional racism.

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