USA: Prison Numbers Hit New High

Blacks Hardest Hit by Incarceration Policy

http://hrw.org/reports/2008/us0508/4.htm#_Toc197164951

Race & Gender

Racial disparities in incarceration for drug offenses are even more evident when the data analysis incorporates gender. As shown in Table 1, drug offenses in 2003 accounted for about two in ten white men entering prison that year (23.9 percent) but nearly four in ten black men (38.3 percent). The differences were less marked among women: drug offenses accounted for 35.9 percent of white women entering prison that year and 36.7 percent of black women.

The proportion of black men sent to prison in 2003 because of drug offenses ranged from a low of one in 10 (Oregon, 11.6 percent) to a high of one in two (New Jersey, 55.1 percent, and Maryland, 50.7 percent). The proportion of white men sent to prison because of drug offenses was never higher than 41.8 percent (Oklahoma).

Drug offenses play a greater role in sending women to prison than men. In seven states (Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin), drug sentences accounted for 50 percent or more of all black women sent to prison in 2003. Convictions for drug offenses accounted for 50 percent or more of the new admissions among white women in three states (North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Utah).

We computed the prison admission rates for drug offenses per 100,000 adult residents for the 34 NCRP participating states, disaggregating the data by gender and race. As shown in Table 3, the drug admission rates for the 34 states together were 495.5 for black men, 44.0 for black women, 42.1 for white men and 9.1 for white women. Drug admission rates for black men ranged from a low of 66.8 per 100,000 black adult males in Oregon, to a high of 1,227.6 in Illinois. For white men, the rates of drug offender admissions ranged from a low of 14.3 per 100,000 white male adult residents in West Virginia to a high of 143.7 in Oklahoma. The highest black male rate is 8.5 times greater than the highest white male rate. The rates at which black women were sent to prison for drug offenses ranged from a low of 11.0 per 100,000 black female adults in Michigan ⁵⁰ to a remarkably high 387.6 in South Dakota. The lowest rate for white women was 1.9 in Wisconsin and the highest was 35.9 in Oklahoma. (The contrast between the black and white rates for men and women in each state is displayed graphically in Figures 6 and 7).

Among the 34 states, black men were admitted to prison on drug charges at 11.8 times the rate of white men. (Table 5). The lowest ratio of black to white male drug admission rates was 2.1, in Missouri, with the highest in Wisconsin, at 46.1. That is, a black man was twice as likely as a white man to be sent to prison on drug charges in Missouri and 46 times as likely in Wisconsin.

Marked racial disparities exist among female offenders as well, although the magnitude of the disparity is smaller. As seen in Table 5, black women are sent to prison on drug charges at 4.8 times the rate of white women. In five states (Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, South Dakota, and Wisconsin), black women are sent to prison on drug charges at more than 10 times the rate of white women, with the greatest disparities in South Dakota (the rate at which black women entered prison for drug offenses was 20 times greater than that of white women) and Wisconsin (black women’s rate was 27.6 times greater than that of white women).

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