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Race And Incarceration Literature Review

1075 Words5 Pages

Literature Review It’s hypothesized that Blacks and Hispanics residing in the United States are more likely to be incarcerated than whites. Vogel and Porter (2016) conducted a study to examine the relationship between race and incarceration in the US. This study draws on data from the Prisoners in 2010 report published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) and the 2010 decennial census, the BJS provides estimates of the total number of sentenced prisoners on December 31, 2010, by age, sex, race, and Hispanic origin (Guerino et al. 2012). The results demonstrated that race is not necessarily directly linked to high incarceration rates. That is, since the white population is aging at a fast pace, the relatively younger ages of the black and Hispanic populations contribute to racial and ethnic disparities in incarceration. Moreover, several studies have observed the persistent racial disparities in incarceration. Proposed explanations for disparities range from variations in offending based on race to biased decision …show more content…

In 2002, around 12 percent of black men in their early twenties were incarcerated (Harrison and Karberg, 2003). In this era of mass incarceration, it’s more common to see blacks or Hispanics behind bars, thus it’s becoming more apparent that there might be a correlation between the race of an individual and its likelihood to be incarcerated (Pettit & Western, 2004). In this study, penal inequality estimated lifetime risks of imprisonment for black and white men. By using the Survey of Inmates of State and Federal Correctional Facilities, the results demonstrated that racial disparities in imprisonment are evident, black men have a higher risk of incarceration compared to whites. This racial disparity affects young individuals as risks of incarceration are six to eight times higher for a black youth than a white youth (Pettit & Western,

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