Fewer Blacks Are Being Incarcerated. What's Up?
By Kelly Virella
The federal government reported in early-December that the number of imprisoned black people in the U.S. has declined by about 18,400 since 2000. That reduces the total number of black people in prison to about 591,900 as of December 2008.
Granted, across the U.S. black males are still imprisoned at a rate 6.5 times higher than white males and about 3 times higher than Latinos. Black women are incarcerated at a rate 3 times higher than white women and twice as high as Latinos.
But the reduction in the black prison population means 61,000 fewer black people were in state or federal prisons than expected by the end of 2008 (based on 2000 levels).
Most of the reduction appears to come from decreases in drug-related incarceration of African-Americans. In April, the D.C.-based Sentencing Project reported a 22 percent decline in the number of black inmates in state prisons for drug offenses, from about 145,000 in 1999 to 113,500 in 2005.
Meanwhile, the judiciary busied itself warehousing more white and Latino people. From 2000 to 2008, the prison population for white people increased by 57,200 to a total of 528,200. During the same time period, the Latino prison population increased by 96,200 to a total of 313,100.