The Prison Policy Initiative report “Breaking Down Mass Incarceration in the 2010 Census: State-by-State Incarceration Rates by Race/Ethnicity” allows easy access to the racial and ethnic rates of prisons and jails in all 50 states. While we know that racial disparity is a shameful part of America’s criminal justice system, “Breaking Down Mass Incarceration in the 2010 Census” lets readers know just how rampant disparity is state-after-state. In the majority of states, Blacks are primarily overrepresented in prisons and jails, but Hispanics and Native Americans also overrepresented. Whites, in every state, are underrepresented.
The overview of the report states:
Over the last four decades, the United States has undertaken a national project of over criminalization that has put more than two million people behind bars at any given time, and brought the U.S. incarceration rate far beyond that of any other nation in the world. A closer look at which communities are most heavily impacted by mass incarceration reveals stark racial and ethnic disparities in U.S. incarceration rates in every region of the country.
Nationally, according to the U.S. Census, Blacks are incarcerated five times more than Whites are, and Hispanics are nearly twice as likely to be incarcerated as Whites.
To access statistics on racial disparity in your state’s prison and jail system read Breaking Down Mass Incarceration in the 2010 Census: State-by-State Incarceration Rates by Race/Ethnicity.
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