Racial Disparities Diminishing, Especially Among Female Prisoners

As dispiriting are the racial inequities of mass-incarceration, recent trends are cause for a sliver of cautious optimism, according to a 2013 report from The Sentencing Project, a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C.

While African Americans were still incarcerated in the last decade "at dramatically higher rates than whites," states The Sentencing Project's February 2013 report on the racial demographics of U.S. prisons, the numbers of blacks incarcerated, per federal data, actually decreased.

For black men, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), the rate of incarceration in state and federal prisons significantly declined between 2000 and 2009 by 9.8%. But for black women, the rate fell even more precipitously, from 205 black women per 100,000 prisoners to 142 per 100,000, a decrease of 30.7%.

"[C]hanges in involvement in crime appear to be contributing to changes in incarceration rates of African Americans overall, and it is likely, though not certain, that this is true for black women as well," writes Marc Mauer, The Sentencing Project's executive director and author of the report.

A more complete snapshot of the women's prison population, however, renders a less-rosy – and, in fact, troubling – picture for whites and Hispanics.

At the end of the decade, nearly 22% more women were incarcerated than 10 years prior, as the number of Hispanic women in prison, specifically, increased an astonishing 75%, and the number of white women in prison increased 48.4%, from around 35,000 in 2000 to over 52,000 in 2009.

Yet, especially among women, the racial composition of U.S. prisons, according to the report, became less disparate. That's because, coupled with the explosion of the numbers of white women in prison, the African American female prison population dropped 24.6% to less than 29,000.

Thus, the per capita ratio of Hispanic women incarcerated to white women–in spite of the larger increase in the Hispanic female population–fell from 1.8:1 to 1.5:1, and that of black women incarcerated to white women dramatically sunk from 6:1 to 2.8:1.

"There is not necessarily a single explanation for the racial/ethnic differences in incarceration rate changes," the report says. "Rather, varying combinations of circumstances relating to involvement in crime, criminal justice responses, and other factors likely affected white, black, and Hispanic women differently, with those factors varying among states as well."

Among those factors, in addition to reportedly fewer black women and more white women committing crimes, are the types of offenses of which they are being convicted.

According to a BJS subset of 12 states – including California, Texas, New York and Florida – there was a 38% increase in drug convictions, and a 66% increase in property crime convictions, as the most serious offenses for which white women were imprisoned in those states between 2000 and 2009.

Black women imprisoned in those states, however, saw decreases in both categories, including a 29% reduction in drug convictions, a trend that likely drove the nationwide drop in the black female prison population.

"Some observers have suggested that changes in women's incarceration by race are driven by increased arrests for prescription drug offenses or changes in the drug of choice among those who engage in such practices," Mauer writes. "Because of the rise in the use of methamphetamine, a drug disproportionately used by whites and Latinos, in certain regions of the country white women may now be more likely to come under criminal justice supervision."

Mauer suggested that, per MacArthur Foundation research, "broader socioeconomic trends contributing to declining life expectancy for low-income white women" might also be contributing to changes in offense rates.

The Sentencing Project report also tilted hopefully toward the "slowing growth," overall, of national imprisonment rates. While state and federal prison populations grew annually by 5.6% and 8.6%, respectively, during the 1990s, those rates of growth fell to 1.1% in state prisons and 3.3% in federal prisons between 2000 and 2010.

Also by the end of the decade, five states – Delaware, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey and New York – imprisoned fewer people than in 2000, and 47 states, according to the report, "experienced at least one year of decline."

"With growing understanding of the consequences of these developments for all communities," the report concludes, "continued progress for reform in the next decade may be possible."

Source: "The Changing Racial Dynamics of Women's Incarceration," by Marc Mauer, The Sentencing Project (February 2013); www.sentencingproject.org

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