Perhaps the most surprising finding reported in Ch. 7 is the graph of the Black incarceration rate, so let’s take a look at that first. This shows that when then 1994 crime bill was passed, the Black incarceration rated was nearly 1,600 out of 100,000 or 1.6%. Clearly it was already on the rise when the graph starts in 1980. Looking at older data makes it clear that the rate had at least quadrupled by the time the bill was passed.
Also, note that it was increasing at its fastest rate just before the bill passed and immediately slowed, gaining less in the next five years than in the previous two. And then, after those five years, it stopped and began to fall.
This does not prove that the 1994 bill stopped the increase in five years, but it is very strong evidence that it did not exacerbate the problem, as is so often claimed by left radicals.
The source of this graph is a report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, published May 24, 2014:
The Growth of Incarceration in the United States
Exploring Causes and Consequences
The graph above is from the report’s Chapter 2, page 57. It is an excerpt with anotations of the full graph, shown here:
Clearly the White rate is about five times lower, but its impact on the total number incarcerated is roughly the same as (or larger than) the Black rate because the White population is roughly five times larger. So the continuing upward trend of the White rate caused the total incarceration rate to continue to increase, even while the black rate stopped and turned down.
This data shows conclusively that the 1994 crime bill was not, on balance, biased against Blacks. Whites fared worse. It also shows that the bill did not cause a spike in incarceration. Rather, for Blacks, it appears to have immediately slowed and soon stop a 20-year trend that was accelerating until 1995, the year after the crime-bill passed.
Double Checking with the Dept. of Justice
The Washington Post (see “incarceration mystery” below) says that “the passage of the 1994 crime bill is often blamed for the spike in black incarceration.” So let’s double check.
In a Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin, I found incarceration data that tells a very similar story. That data and some simple calculations are here.
[table id=2 /]
This shows that before the 1994 crime bill, the incarceration rate was increasing rapidly for both Blacks and Whites, but faster for Blacks. The difference would be greater if 1995 had not been the first year that the bill took effect.
While the bill was in effect, the increasing rate of incarceration slowed for both, but much for Blacks than for Whites. For Blacks the increases had come to a halt by the time the expenditure parts of the bill had expired.
Over the next nine years, the Black incarceration rate decreased, while the white rate continue to increase.
Again we see that there is no indication in the data that the bill cause more incarceration than would have happened without it. And there is not indication that the bill was, on balance, racist. Quite the contrary.
A mass incarceration mystery
By Eli Hager
Dec. 15, 2017, Washington Post
It may come as a surprise to learn that for the last 15 years, racial disparities in the American prison system have actually been on the decline, according to a Marshall Project analysis of yearly reports by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics and the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting system.
Between 2000 and 2015, the imprisonment rate of black men dropped by more than 24 percent. At the same time, the white male rate increased slightly, the BJS numbers indicate.
Among women, the trend is even more dramatic. From 2000 to 2015, the black female imprisonment rate dropped by nearly 50 percent; during the same period, the white female rate shot upward by 53 percent. As the nonprofit Sentencing Project has pointed out, the racial disparity between black and white women’s incarceration was once 6 to 1. Now it’s 2 to 1.
Ripped Apart
