Majority of Prison Population Remains White and Black

At the end of 2021, around 1.2 million prisoners were serving time in U.S. state or federal correctional facilities, down 25 percent compared to 2011. While the overall number of incarcerated people has gone down, the share of the inmates' race or origin is still largely the same compared to ten years prior.

Data from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) shows that an overwhelming majority of prisoners were either white or Black. The share of the latter fell by 3.5 percent compared to 2011, with Hispanic, Native American or Alaska Native and Asian inmate shares rising by between 0.1 and 1.3 percent. However, around 11 percent of inmates also fell into the category of Other, a broad grouping encompassing everyone that belongs to any race or comes from any background not broken out by the statisticians at the BJS or that claims a mixed ancestry.

Even with a majority of U.S. citizens feeling that there is more crime in their area compared to the previous year since 2021, according to polling by Gallup, the facts tell a different story. FBI data shows that the violent crime rate per 100,000 people stood at its lowest point since 2015 in 2022, down 50 percent from its all-time high in 1991. Property crime rates were at their second-lowest since 1985. While this data only covers 76 percent of the population due to not all agencies reporting incident figures to the NIBRS database, it is nonetheless an indicator that crimes like murder or robbery are far from rising.