In Doing Time on the Outside, anthropologist Donald Braman investigates an aspect of the effects of mass incarceration that is often overlooked by other scholars. Analyzing the personal accounts of families with close relatives in prison and also of prisoners, Braman argues that incarceration not only punishes offenders, but also directly affects their immediate family members. In the words of Braman (2004), incarceration brings social hardship into the lives of these families by “transforming social institutions of social exchange, kinship, and community,” devaluing reciprocity, and holding offenders less accountable to their families (p. 9).Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Additionally, it is widely believed that incarceration is disproportionately high in disadvantaged communities because a lack of economic opportunity often leads young adults to engage in criminal activity. Braman, however, also focuses on the consequences of incarceration by providing evidence that reveals another aspect of the relationship between poverty and incarceration: as he states, “many inner-city families not only experience incarceration because they are poor, but they are also poor. because they experience incarceration” (Braman, 2004, p. 154). Thus, an important claim Braman makes from his research is that incarceration exacerbates economic adversity, especially in already disadvantaged communities. One of the main reasons Braman provides for this key claim is that incarceration diminishes economic opportunities for ex-offenders. A second reason is that incarceration affects families by inhibiting capital accumulation; and as a result, incarceration also diminishes the wealth that future generations of these families will inherit. Therefore, economic adversity resulting from incarceration not only affects prisoners upon their release due to diminished economic opportunities, but also strongly affects prisoners' families from the time of incarceration onward. As mentioned above, Braman's main type of evidence is a collection of personal accounts from interviews conducted with offenders and their families, during sentencing and sometimes after release. The story of a delinquent named Clinton who went through the prison system multiple times primarily supports Braman's thesis that incarceration diminishes economic opportunities for ex-offenders. Clinton was unable to find a job after his release, which both Clinton and Braman explained was due to his criminal record (Braman, 2004, p. 147). From personal accounts it also emerges that, both due to the increased expenses that families of offenders face due to incarceration and the removal of the main provider of domestic services, these families often have to use their wealth to cover new expenses. For example, Braman explains how some families resort to refinancing their homes, which is a problem because it devalues ​​their wealth. In one story, a family lost their home even after remortgaging and various others saw a decrease in the value of their homes due to remortgaging (Braman, 2004, p. 158). And not only does incarceration deplete families of their wealth, it also prevents them from accumulating capital, as they are forced to allocate a larger share of their income to incarceration-related expenses. Additionally, all of this economic adversity resulting from incarceration is increasingly impacting families from communitiesdisadvantaged because they already had a limited income. Braman's statement about the relationship between incarceration and economic adversity is important to his central claim. , which states that the effects of incarceration profoundly impact the families of offenders in socioeconomic terms. First, because incarceration reduces the likelihood that an inmate will earn a sustainable income after release, the economic adversities that families face upon incarceration – such as unexpected higher expenses and reduced total family income – become a problem destined to persist in the long term. This means that not only are offenders held less accountable for their responsibilities at home because they cannot provide for their families while incarcerated, but they are also unable to meet this responsibility upon release due to the associated reduced income opportunities. to a criminal record. Second, because incarceration inhibits capital accumulation, incarceration also affects future generations by decreasing the wealth they will inherit. The major effects are that these next generations will likely remain in poverty, their communities will likely remain impoverished, and the correlation between poverty and incarceration is therefore one in which one exacerbates the other and vice versa. According to Braman (2004), the bigger picture demonstrates that decreasing economic exchanges between offenders and their families gradually reduces kinship, trust, and social reciprocity in their communities (p. 162). Furthermore, this leads to a deterioration of family values ​​across generations, a deterioration that is again largely the result of incarceration (Braman, 2004, p. 162). An article by Bruce Western provides further evidence to support Braman's conclusions on the relationship between incarceration and economic opportunity, despite analyzing different data. In “The Impact of Incarceration on Wage Mobility and Inequality,” Western (2002) investigates ex-offenders' access to stable jobs where wage mobility is typically experienced (p. 527). Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) from 1983 to 1999, Western analyzes the employment history of ex-offenders to look for changes in wages. He believes that incarceration not only reduces the wage earnings of ex-offenders in general, but also negatively affects their rate of wage growth. Western (2002) finds that incarceration lowers wages by 10 to 20 percent and affects wage mobility by up to 30 percent (p. 541). Western's article supports Braman's finding that incarceration exacerbates economic adversity by decreasing economic opportunity. However, Western's focus is primarily on wage mobility as an economic opportunity, while most of Braman's focus is on the challenge ex-offenders face just to get a job. This is because both researchers collect different data. The biggest difference in this data is that Western's data is spread out over a longer period of time, allowing it to draw its conclusions. Furthermore, analyzing the evidence that Braman gathers from personal accounts such as that of Clinton – who once again resorted to drug-related activity after failing to find work as an ex-offender – it is reasonable for Braman to conclude that ex-offenders face a greater challenge in find work compared to those without a criminal record. It should be noted that Braman (2004) recognizes, however, that when ex-offenders find work, “their earning potential is significantly lower than that of non-offenders” (p. 155). However, its evidence alone is not.