Racial disparities have narrowed across the U.S. criminal justice system over 16 years, though Black people are still significantly more likely to be behind bars than White people, new federal figures show.
Courtesy The Marshall Project/PBS Although the number of people in prisons and jails in America has slightly declined, numbers released on Thursday, April 25, by the Bureau of Justice Statistics still show that nearly 1.5 million individuals were in prison by the end of 2017. The statistics also note that the U.S. continues to lock up more people than any other nation. And, despite a narrowing disparity between incarcerated black and white women, females have emerged as the new face of mass incarceration. “I don’t think this should be much of a surprise as two of the main for-profit prison