ABSTRACT
Over the past 35 years, the United States has become the world’s largest jailer, quadrupling its prison and jail populations to its current 2.3 million (Beck & Harrison, 2001; Carson, 2015; Gillard & Beck, 1995; Justice Policy Institute, 2000; Mauer, 2006). Demographically, the expanse of mass incarceration has not affected all groups equally (Pager, 2007). More than any other groups, young (20-34) Black males, and to a somewhat lesser extent Hispanic males, with low levels of education (less than high school) who live in communities of concentrated disadvantage have been disproportionately affected by America’s incarceration boom (Pager, 2007). Black men, for example, compose a mere 6% of the population, but in 2013 they accounted for the largest portion of male inmates (37%) under federal or state jurisdiction, followed by Hispanic men (22%), who are 8% of the population, and non-Hispanic White men (32%) who are 31% of the population (Carson, 2014; U.S. Census Bureau, 2015). Within the male incarcerated population, Black men had the highest imprisonment rates across all age groups, the highest being for the 25 to 39 years age cohort (Carson, 2014). Moreover, for males ages 18 to 19-the age range with the greatest difference in imprisonment rates between Blacks and Whites-Black males (1,092 inmates per 100,000) were more than nine times more likely to be imprisoned than White males (115 inmates per 100,000; Carson, 2014). No surprise, then, that regardless of their respective numbers in the overall population, in every state of the union, racial and ethnic minorities in general and Hispanics, Native Americans, Asian Pacific Islanders, and Blacks in particular are overrepresented in incarceration, while Whites are underrepresented and in a few states equally represented (Hartney & Vuong, 2009). These racial and ethnic disparities are similarly present among the female jail and prison population. Women represent 15% of the nation’s incarcerated population, but since 2000 their numbers in state and federal prisons have risen by 21.6%, significantly outpacing the increase for men at 15.6% (Beck & Karberg, 2001). In 2010, Black women were incarcerated at three times the rate of White women (133 per 100,000 versus 47 per 100,000), while Hispanic women were incarcerated at 1.6 times the rate (Guerino, Harrison, & Sabol, 2011). These disparities are present even as the number of Black women incarcerated in the nation’s state and federal prisons declined from 2000 to 2009, while rising substantially for both White women and Hispanic women (Guerino, Harrison, & Sabol, 2011).
