U.S. prisoners by race

According to the Bureau of Justice, in 2018, there were more than 1.2 million prisoners in state and federal prisons. Of those, 465,200 were Black, 430,500 were White, and 330,200 were Hispanic.

In order to fully appreciate this data, it’s helpful to know the breakdown of the total U.S. population by race. While the majority of the U.S. population is White (60.4% identifies as White, non-Hispanic), there are more total Black prisoners than White ones. The U.S. population as a whole is 13.4% Black, but roughly 38% of the prison population in 2018 was Black.

In an equal society, we would expect that the prison population would have roughly the same makeup as the overall population. This is especially true since we incarcerate so many people in this country and therefore have an unusually large sample size. In other words, we would expect roughly 13.4% of the prison population to be Black, not 38%.

The Hispanic population is also over-represented in this data. While 18.3% of the overall population identifies as Hispanic, nearly 27% of the prison population in 2018 was Hispanic.

Total U.S. prisoners by race

(sentenced prisoners under jurisdiction of state or federal authorities)

	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018
White	461,500	450,200	440,200	436,500	430,500
Black	518,700	499,400	487,300	475,900	465,200
Hispanic	338,900	333,200	339,600	336,500	330,200
Total	1,319,100	1,282,800	1,267,100	1,248,900	1,225,900

Percentage of U.S. prisoners by race

	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018
White	35.0%	35.1%	34.7%	35.0%	35.1%
Black	39.3%	38.9%	38.5%	38.1%	37.9%
Hispanic	25.7%	26.0%	26.8%	26.9%	26.9%