Title: Same Crime, More Time - Racial Disparities in U.S. Prison System
Headings: Same Crime, More Time
Same Crime, More Time
Content: While experts are still working out what’s driving the decline in disparities, Sabol believes it’s related to lower arrest rates for violent crimes and drug crimes among Blacks. “The number of Black offenders in robbery, assault, rape cases — it’s gone down by 30 percent,” he says. “ These are really dramatic decreases.” Yet even as the number of Black men and women in prisons has declined, the report uncovered a growing disparity in the time served by Black inmates. Compared to white offenders, African Americans who entered prison could expect to serve more time than whites for all violent and for drug crimes. Prison time among Black people increased by one percent or more each year between 2000 and 2016. There may be a number of contributing factors for the growing disparity in sentencing, including criminal history, says Sabol. “The war on drugs in the 1980s and 1990s pulled many African Americans into the criminal justice system,” he says. “ If two people come before a judge and one of them has a longer or more severe criminal history, that person is going to get a longer sentence.” Sabol also speculates that as crime rates have fallen, the defendants who are prosecuted are more likely to have longer criminal histories.