State of the Union 2019: Criminal Justice
- The recent reversal in overall incarceration rates takes the form of an especially prominent decline in rates of imprisonment for black millennial men in their late 20s. The decline is far less dramatic for other population groups—such as white and Hispanic men—that never experienced the extremely high rates that black men experienced.
- The imprisonment rate for black millennial men—approximately 4.7 percent—nonetheless remains extremely high.
- Conventional incarceration rates conceal important features of the millennial experience. For example, black millennial men continue to face extremely high risks of solitary confinement, and they continue to live with the effects of mass incarceration via their parents’ exposure to historically high rates of imprisonment.
