Over the last 40 years, imprisonment has become a common stage in the life-course for
low-skilled and minority men, with implications not only for inequality among adult
men but also for inequality more broadly. Unfortunately, all research documenting how
increases in imprisonment have transformed the life-course of poor, minority men has
neglected to estimate how much time black and white men on average spend imprisoned
or marked as an ex-prisoner. In this article, we fill this gap by using multistate life tables to
estimate what share of their working lives (18–64) black and white men will spend imprisoned
and marked as ex-prisoners. Our estimates imply that white men spend on average
0.33 years of their working lives imprisoned and 2.31 years marked, while black men spend
on average 1.79 years of their working lives imprisoned and 11.14 years marked. This
implies that black men spend on average one-third of their working lives either imprisoned
or having been freed but marked by the penal system. For the 32.2% of black men who ever
experience imprisonment (Bonczar, 2003), moreover, these estimates imply that they
spend on average 5.56 years imprisoned, corresponding to 13.4% of their working lives.
Taken together, these findings imply a dramatic reorientation of the life course for black
men, as one-third of the black male population will spend one-seventh of their working life
in prison.