Much of the past half-century in the United States has been defined by the expansion of the carceral state, rendering criminal legal institutions a primary point of contact between many citizens and the government. This era has been marked most starkly by its disproportionate impact on Black Americans, who have borne the brunt of punitive policies and enforcement. My dissertation aims to examine how carceral contact shapes identity and policy attitudes among Black Americans. Through various methodologies, I explore how contact with the criminal legal system influences intra-group dynamics among Black Americans. My survey experiments explore the extent to which Black Americans psychologically distance themselves, reject, or socially sanction in-group members with carceral histories. The goal is to empirically assess whether and how in-group policing and stigma contribute to the weakening of group ties in an era of mass incarceration.
