Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Veterans suffer from an array of system inflicted hardships including unemployment, homelessness and mass incarceration. This research paper explores the relationship between incarceration rate and race within the veteran group. I obtained aggregate data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics which reported the incarceration rates (prison and jail) during 2011 for veterans in the United States. For this sample, incarceration rate was measured as 855 per 100,000 veterans in the United States. I also retrieved data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011 report on total veterans by race. For the sake of this study, I am specifically interested in incarceration rates for blacks and whites. The response variable is incarceration and the explanatory variable is race; black and white. My null hypothesis is that there is no difference between the proportions of black and white veterans incarcerated. The population proportions are equal to 0. My alternative hypothesis is that there is a difference between the proportions of white and black veterans who are incarcerated. The population proportions are not equal to 0. I ran a prtesti in stata, which entails finding the proportion of black veterans incarcerated and white veterans incarcerated and comparing them. Based on the stata output, there is a difference between the incarceration rate of black veterans compared to white veterans. Based on the sample, given a p-value of 0.00, I rejected the null hypothesis that there is no difference between the proportions of white and black veterans incarcerated. The difference between the two means are .01646. Thus at the 95% confidence interval we reject the null in favor of the alternative hypothesis. I am 95% confident that this sample falls within -.0057 and -.005 of the population. This result presents many implications for future policy proposals including recommendations that cater to the complex intersectionalities for each veteran. It also presents more questions such as “Are veterans of color further marginalized than their white counterparts? Does veteran status serve as a safe guard in reference to veterans interacting with the criminal justice system? How can we rehabilitate veterans effectively given racial identity to decrease the incarceration rate across all racial groups?