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COVID pandemic increased racial disparities in US prison populations

A public data set on the size and racial composition of US prison populations has been generated. Its analysis indicates how biases in sentencing lengths shape prisons’ racial make-up in the United States.
  1. Jessica M. Eaglin

    1. Jessica M. Eaglin is in the Maurer School of Law, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 47405, USA.

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Fifty years ago, the United States initiated an unprecedented increase in its prison population that disproportionately affected its racial minorities (see go.nature.com/3knvxcf). From 2009, numbers of incarcerated people began to stabilize and modestly decline1. Writing in Nature, Klein et al.2 report that conditions created by the COVID-19 pandemic led to a dramatic reduction in prison populations in every state. The authors find that Black people remained in prison disproportionately during this period, and provide evidence that this might be because they receive notably longer sentences than do white people. The findings highlight the enduring importance of racially disparate sentencing in the US criminal system.

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Nature 617, 259-260 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-01023-y

References

  1. Carson, E. A. Prisoners in 2019 (US Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2020).

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  3. Eaglin, J. M. Minn. Law Rev. 104, 2715–2740 (2020).

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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