A new study by researchers at Duke University reveals that the chances of being incarcerated in the United States are higher for African Americans than whites or Hispanics, regardless of their wealth. Furthermore, the team also found that African Americans and Hispanics who previously served jail time were a great deal poorer than their white counterparts.
Previous studies have found connections between race, prison time and wealth before and after incarceration, and the new findings support these results and shed additional light on the issue.
The researchers analyzed data gathered from the 1979 cohort of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, which spanned 1979 to 2012. The data covered 12,686 young men and women who were between the ages of 14 and 22 years old at the time of the first interviews in 1979, with incarcerated subjects interviewed whenever permitted.
The study examined variables such as race, gender and language, and after 1985, it began to examine the wealth of the participants and their families.
In addition, the team looked at those who had not been incarcerated by 1985, as well as the participants' net worth and likelihood of being put in jail during the study.
"Americans who experience incarceration come from a lower wealth background compared to those who do not," said Khaing Zaw, who led the study. "When it comes to wealth and incarceration outcomes, the disadvantages of being black or Hispanic compound the disadvantages of poverty."
Although higher levels of wealth were connected to shorter jail stays, the incarceration rate for African Americans was higher at every level of wealth when compared to their white counterparts. Interestingly, the likelihood of incarceration for Hispanics was lower than it was for whites at some wealth levels.
Racial disparity shrinks as wealth levels rise, but it is always present to some degree. This could be due to other factors including the wealth of extended family members or social connections.
"To the best of my knowledge, this is the first study to look at the impact of prior wealth on the odds of incarceration and to demonstrate that wealth does not provide the same degree of insulation from imprisonment for black and Hispanic males as it does for white males," said William Darity, co-author of the study.
The findings were published in the Feb. 15 issue of Race and Social Problems.
