Why are black incarceration rates falling?

So it may come as a surprise to learn that for the last 15 years, racial disparities in the American prison system have actually been on the decline, according to a Marshall Project analysis of yearly reports by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics and the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting system.

This story was published in collaboration with Washington Post’s Wonkblog

Between 2000 and 2015, the imprisonment rate of black men dropped by more than 24 percent. At the same time, the white male rate increased slightly, the BJS numbers indicate.

Among women, the trend is even more dramatic. From 2000 to 2015, the black female imprisonment rate dropped by nearly 50 percent; during the same period, the white female rate shot upward by 53 percent. As the nonprofit Sentencing Project has pointed out, the racial disparity between black and white women’s incarceration was once 6 to 1. Now it’s 2 to 1.

As for potential answers:

1) Crime, arrests and incarceration are declining overall.

Those decreases benefit the most incarcerated group: African Americans. Crime rates have been on the decline since just after 1990, as have arrests. Given that both measures disproportionately affect the black community, one theory goes, the overall drop should shrink the racial gap in incarceration, too…

2) The war on drugs has shifted its focus from crack and marijuana to meth and opioids…

3) White people have also faced declining socioeconomic prospects, leading to more criminal justice involvement…

4) Criminal justice reform has been happening in cities, where more black people live, but not in rural areas.

Here is the full piece by Eli Hager, via Anecdotal.

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