Tuesday, October 04, 2022

The Falling Black Incarceration Rate in the U.S. Really!

Recommendable, however some parts are suspect! 

The underlying report is a bit weird. Just take the title "Pushing toward parity" ???

Is some of the "success" due to defund the police and systemic racism attacks against police? If so, then this is dubious!

"But disparities will persist, they report, unless at least one of three things changes. One, the racial gap in violent offending could decline; two, since black offenders tend to have longer criminal histories than whites, states could base incarceration less on criminal history [???]; and three, states could otherwise reduce the difference in “time served” between prisoners from the two racial groups. ...
State prisons have never been packed full of drug offenders—as of 2000, less than 30 percent of imprisoned blacks and 20 percent of imprisoned whites were there for drugs—but the shifting pattern is most dramatic in that category. The per capita disparity fell from 15-to-one to less than four-to-one, as the black imprisonment rate for drugs fell by more than two-thirds. (Drugs certainly haven’t become less serious of a problem in the past 20 years, but the U.S. has been incarcerating far fewer drug offenders, the racial balance of the issue has evolved as focus shifted to opioids, marijuana has been legalized in many states, and activists have had success in labeling drug enforcement racist. [???]) The disparities for violent, property, and public-order offenses also fell, but much less dramatically. ...
Beyond the arrest stage, differences in offending rates by themselves now explain more than half of the white–black incarceration gap for violent crimes. The remaining unexplained gap is not necessarily bias, but it also includes differences in criminal histories among whites and blacks arrested for the same offense, as well as differences in offense severity, both of which can result in longer sentences. As the report notes, for example, murderers make up about 30 percent of violent offenders kept in state prisons—and black “individuals were convicted in more than half (56 percent) of homicides in cases with a known assailant.” ..."

The Falling Black Incarceration Rate | City Journal The disparity between whites and blacks has shrunk.

Pushing toward parity. Black-White National Imprisonment Trends, 2000 to 2020 A new report advancing earlier CCJ research examines 2000-2020 trends in racial disparities within the U.S. criminal justice system.

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