APSS: Adriane Fresh

Red, Blue and Grey Abstract pattern

Online Meeting

The American Politics Speaker Series (APSS) welcomes Adriane Fresh, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Duke University. 

Enfranchisement and Incarceration after the 1965 Voting Rights Act

Talk abstract: The 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) sought to fundamentally change the distribution of electoral power in the U.S. South. We examine the consequences of this mass enfranchisement of Black people for the use of the carceral state—police, the courts, and the prison system. We study the extent to which White Southern elites turned to the carceral state as a tool of Black political suppression when the VRA rendered Jim Crow policies unusable. To systematically test this, use new historical data on state and county prison intake data by race (~1940-1985) in a series of difference-in-differences designs. We find that states covered by Section 5 of the VRA experienced a differential increase in Black prison admissions relative to those that were not covered, and that incarceration varied systematically in proportion to the electoral threat posed by Black voters. We investigate evidence for the mechanism by examining how punitive public opinion changed by race and geography at the time of the VRA. Our findings indicate the potentially perverse consequences of enfranchisement when establishment power seeks—and finds—other outlets of social and political control.This seminar is part of the American Political Speakers Series, sponsored by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, and co-sponsored by CAPS.