The Sentencing Project reports that a study by Christian Breunig and Rose Ernst in the journal Race and Justice concludes that race plays a role in increased corrections spending: “the higher the proportion of African-Americans in a state, the higher the prioritization of corrections spending.” Further, when the proportion of African-Americans in a given state is relatively low, the authors find that income inequality becomes a factor in corrections spending.

The authors “find strong evidence for the impact of racial threat and inequality, rather than political institutional variables upon state decision makers’ priorities.” Moreover, the study finds that racial threat functions no matter the class status of the African-American population.  Race serves as the primary “cleavage” while class serves as a secondary “cleavage” when the African-American population is relatively low.