From Council of Criminal Justice:
Introduction
Over the past 20 years, most American states have adopted a wide range of changes to their criminal sentencing statutes. The goals of the reforms varied. Some targeted certain offenses for greater or lesser penalties. Others aimed to cut correctional costs, expand alternatives to incarceration, and reduce recidivism. Few laws were enacted explicitly to reduce racial and ethnic disparities. Still, many policymakers hoped they would do just that, and the starkly disproportionate incarceration of Black people has been a central component of the national conversation about criminal justice reform.
Previous reports in this series have examined national trends in state imprisonment disparities and sought to shed light on what might be driving them. The reports documented a narrowing of Black and White disparities1 between 2000 and 2019, including a decrease of two-thirds in the disparity between Black and White people in state prisons for drug crimes. Explanations for the overall trends included faster growth of the Black resident population and shrinking racial gaps in arrest rates, prison admissions, and returns to prison for technical violations of parole. The factors contributing to reductions in disparity were partially offset by widening racial differences in the amount of time people entering prison could expect to serve.
This brief adds depth to these national findings by examining whether and how sentencing law changes affected imprisonment disparities in 12 states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, New York, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah. The study states vary across characteristics such as demographic composition, region, the political party in power in the executive and legislative branches, sentencing structure, data availability, and whether the state had engaged in organized criminal justice reform efforts.
Read the brief here.
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