Over the last two decades, efforts to stem the tide of mass incarceration appear to have made inroads. A new report from the Sentencing Project found that the imprisonment rate for Black men was nearly cut in half since 2000.
However, as the report notes, the era of mass incarceration of Black Americans is still far from behind us. Black men born in 2001 have a one in five chance of being incarcerated throughout their lifetime. Moreover, the report warns that a wave of anti-reform efforts threatens the hard-won gains from the last twenty years.
The October report from the Sentencing Project, a non-profit criminal justice research and advocacy organization, examined the aftermath of the four-decades-long buildup of the U.S. prison population.
The Good News
Incarceration rates in the United States have declined since their peaks in the early 2000s. Since 2009, the overall prison population declined by 25 percent. And the decline was even greater for Black Americans.
The number of incarcerated Black Americans decreased by 39 percent since its peak in 2002. Things look even better when you dig into the imprisonment rate for both Black men and Black women. The imprisonment rate for Black women fell by 70% between 2000 and 2021. And the imprisonment rate for Black men fell by nearly half over the same period.
The Bad News
The not-so-great news is that we’re still nowhere near out of the woods, and anti-reform efforts aren’t helping. As we mentioned previously, one in five Black men is likely to end up incarcerated during their lifetime, according to the Sentencing Project. That’s down from one in three Black men who were born in 1981, but it’s not exactly heartening.
There also continues to be persistent racial disparities within the criminal justice system. The lifetime likelihood of imprisonment for Black men is four times higher than that of white men.
It’s also worth noting that these decreases follow a massive wave of mass incarceration. Our prison population in 2021 was still six times as large as it was 50 years ago.
Anti-reform efforts are also gaining momentum, says the report. In Washington, D.C., Congress rolled back criminal justice reforms voted on by the D.C.’s Democratically-elected city council. Other cities and states like New York and Florida have narrowed previous reforms.
While the Sentencing Project’s report does include some good news, it also highlights the fragility of these gains and the long road still ahead.