A new analysis of US prison populations shows that the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic saw a drop in inmates, but the percentage of incarcerated Black people rose. The study was published yesterday in Nature.
The analysis showed that, by the middle of 2020, US prison population had fallen by 200,000 people from pre-pandemic levels. Between March of 2020 and July of 2021, the population had reduced by 17% overall. Researchers said this was due to courts shutting down across the nation, and early prisoner-release programs put into effect because of the novel coronavirus.
The reduction, however, was seen almost exclusively among White prisoners: In March 2020, Black prisoners made up 38.9% of the nation's prison population. But from March to November 2020, the percentage of incarcerated Black people increased by almost a full percentage point (0.9%). That increase undid a 7-year trend of falling incarceration numbers of Black Americans.
"The trend we observe at the national level is reproduced exactly among states with the highest Black and Latino populations, and persists in some form in nearly every other state," the authors said. "We estimate that nearly 15,000 fewer Black people would have been incarcerated in January 2021 if the racial disparities we observe were not present."
The authors said the pandemic revealed racial dynamics that had long been at play in prison-sentencing trends.
"The pandemic acted like a stress test for the criminal legal system, and that stress test revealed these disparities," said study author Brandon Ogbunu, PhD, of Yale University, in a Santa Fe Institute press release.
The trend we observe at the national level is reproduced exactly among states with the highest Black and Latino populations, and persists in some form in nearly every other state.