#SOUTH AFRICA PRISONERS BY RACR SERIES#

The Vera Institute of Justice has attempted to fill this gap with its Incarceration Trends project, by gathering additional data from individual states.

#SOUTH AFRICA PRISONERS BY RACR SERIES#

BJS does publish state-level race and ethnicity data in its annual Prisoners series ( Appendix Table 2 in 2018), but only every 6-7 years in its Jail Inmates series (most recently the 2013 Census of Jails report, Table 7). State-level race and ethnicity data can be hard to find if you are looking to federal government sources like the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). Q: Where can I find data about racial disparities in my state’s criminal justice system?Ī: Unfortunately, the more specific you want to get with race/ethnicity data, the harder it is to find an answer, especially one that’s up-to-date. As a result, our observations of racial and ethnic discrimination are limited to these broad categories and lack any real nuance.

They disregard tribal differences, sweep people of East Asian and South Asian origins into one category, and somehow ignore Arab Americans entirely. Moreover, all of these categories are so broad that they lump together groups with very different experiences with the U.S. Most obviously, not all racial or ethnic groups are consistently represented in the data less populous Census-identified groups, such as Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, Asian, and American Indian or Alaska Native – as well as the sizable but less specific “Two or more races” and “Some other race” – are very often excluded in publications, even when they are collected. Q: Why are some racial/ethnic categories not represented in the data?Ī: The question of how accurately race and ethnicity data reflect justice-involved populations goes beyond inconsistent labels. In these charts (and in most of our publications), we use the terminology of the original data sources. For example, the Census Bureau and most national criminal justice data uses the category “American Indian or Alaska Native” to describe indigenous people in the U.S., but the juvenile justice system data uses the term “American Indian.” Likewise, “Hispanic” is used most frequently in various national data sets to refer to those with Spanish-speaking ancestry, but some sources use Latino/a (or Latinx), which specifically refers to those with Latin American ancestry. There are racial disparities in policing and arrests:įrequently asked questions about race and ethnicity in criminal justice data Q: Why are terms used inconsistently, such as “Hispanic” and “Latino/a”?Ī: Sharp-eyed readers will notice some inconsistency in the terms used in the charts above, and across the literature more generally. These charts provide a fuller picture of racial inequality in the criminal justice system, and make clear that a broad transformation will be needed to uproot the racial injustice of mass incarceration.įollowing the slideshows, we also address five frequently asked questions about criminal justice race/ethnicity data. The racism inherent in mass incarceration affects children as well as adults, and is often especially punishing for people of color who are also marginalized along other lines, such as gender and class.īecause racial disparity data is often frustratingly hard to locate, we’ve compiled the key data available into a series of charts, arranged into five slideshows focused on policing, juvenile justice, jails and pretrial detention, prisons and sentencing, and reentry. This extends beyond policing, of course: Systemic racism is evident at every stage of the system, from policing to prosecutorial decisions, pretrial release processes, sentencing, correctional discipline, and even reentry. Recent protests calling for radical changes to American policing have brought much-needed attention to the systemic racism within our criminal justice system. Visualizing the racial disparities in mass incarceration Racial inequality is evident in every stage of the criminal justice system - here are the key statistics compiled into a series of charts.

South africa prisoners by racr