As of Spring 2021, more than 1.8 million people reside in U.S. jail systems. After decades of incarceration growth, 2021 finally saw a reduction in the prison population, with COVID reduction policies largely accounting for the decrease. However, the decline of incarcerated persons nationally doesn't tell the story of significant increases among different state and local prison populations. Rates decreased in urban communities, but increased in more rural areas across the country.
The national decline also doesn't shed any light on the racial disparities with the U.S. incarceration rates. At this point, the over-representation of Black men in the prison system is well documented. Black men constitute about 13 percent of the male population in the United States, but about 35 percent of those incarcerated. One in five Black people born in 2001 is likely to be incarcerated in their lifetime, compared to one in 10 persons of Latino descent and one in 29 white people. Nationally, Latinx people are also overrepresented in prisons and jails, yet common data misclassification leads to distorted, lower estimates of Latinx incarceration rates and distorted, higher estimates of white incarceration rates. Smaller and inconsistent data reporting make it difficult to measure the effects of racism for incarcerated people of other racial groups.
The 10 states with the highest incarceration rates:
Black men constitute about 13 percent of the US male population, but about 35 percent of those incarcerated. So, in revisiting the list of the top ten states by rate of incarceration:
White persons are under-represented in the prison population of every single U.S. state.
This is just a small part of the illuminating look at overall incarcerations trends and the result of ongoing work from The Vera Institute of Justice. You can view the interactive map above and other data in their Incarceration Trends study.
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