At the risk of making another off-topic comment, I think it should be noted that the notion of ‘economic impact of mass incarceration’ can actually be highly broadly defined. Indeed, some economists such as Gary Becker - who won the Nobel Prize in Economics - can actually be said to be sociologists; and indeed, some of Becker’s most famous work is regarding the sociology of crime.
The same could be said of the academic field of business, which is arguably even broader than the field of economics. Heck, there are many business professors who publish in the American Sociological Review and other sociology journals.
Regarding the topic of criminal justice specifically, I think it bears note that Modupe Akinola, Associate Professor at Columbia Business School, wrote her entire PhD dissertation while she was a student at Harvard Business School regarding when police officers, depending on their cortisol levels, decide to shoot unarmed white and black suspects. {Note, I don’t believe that I am invading Professor Akinola’s privacy, as her dissertation was subsequently published in the journal Behavioral Neuroscience and is therefore publicly available.} It’s far from obvious to me what that research has to do with business per se. Nevertheless, she got the requisite dissertation signatures to obtain a PhD from Harvard Business School, and she’s now a professor at Columbia Business School earning perhaps triple what a criminal justice professor would make. If she can do that, then it doesn’t seem outrageous to me that other students might earn business PhD’s and place at top business schools with research regarding other criminal justice topics.