William J. Sabol and Thaddeus L. Johnson of the Council on Criminal Justice have released a new report breaking down the black–white gap in incarceration since 2000—focusing on state prisons, which house the vast majority of prisoners in the U.S., and excluding Hispanics from both the black and white populations.
They find that the disparity has markedly decreased, a little-noticed trend. In 2000, fewer than 300 of every 100,000 white adults were in state prisons. For blacks, the number was about eight times higher—nearly 2,500. Over the next two decades, the black rate fell by nearly half, while the white rate first edged up and then dipped somewhat, bringing the disparity under five-to-one in 2020.
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