Pettit on the Prison Population, Survey Data and African-American Progress

Becky Pettit talks with host Russ Roberts about her book Invisible Men, about the growth of the prison population in the U.S. in recent decades. Pettit describes the magnitude of the increase particularly among demographic groups. She then discusses the implications of this increase for interpreting social statistics. Because the prison population isn't included in the main government surveys used by social scientists, data drawn from those surveys can be misleading as to what is actually happening among demographic groups, particularly the African-American population.