Title: Imprisonment rate of black Americans fell by a third from 2006 to 2018 | Pew Research Center
Headings: Black imprisonment rate in the U.S. has fallen by a third since 2006
Black imprisonment rate in the U.S. has fallen by a third since 2006
Facts are more important than ever

Content: The black imprisonment rate at the end of 2018 was nearly twice the rate among Hispanics (797 per 100,000) and more than five times the rate among whites (268 per 100,000). Black men are especially likely to be imprisoned. There were 2,272 inmates per 100,000 black men in 2018, compared with 1,018 inmates per 100,000 Hispanic men and 392 inmates per 100,000 white men. The rate was even higher among black men in certain age groups: Among those ages 35 to 39, for example, about one-in-twenty black men were in state or federal prison in 2018 (5,008 inmates for every 100,000 black men in this age group). The racial and ethnic makeup of U.S. prisons continues to look substantially different from the demographics of the country as a whole. In 2018, black Americans represented 33% of the sentenced prison population, nearly triple their 12% share of the U.S. adult population. Whites accounted for 30% of prisoners, about half their 63% share of the adult population. Hispanics accounted for 23% of inmates, compared with 16% of the adult population. Black inmates have long outnumbered white and Hispanic prisoners in the U.S., but these gaps have become narrower as the black imprisonment rate has fallen.