Data Source: Table 4 of Zaw et al., Race Wealth and Incarceration: Results from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (2016). (Graph: Wendy Sawyer, 2020)
This graph originally appeared in The Crippling Effect of Incarceration on Wealth.
This updated version appears in Visualizing the racial disparities in mass incarceration. Previous research in Black Wealth, White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality highlights the gap between the wealth of White people and that of Black people. This graph shows that even Whites that experienced incarceration have higher levels of wealth than Blacks that have never experienced incarceration.
Events
- March 19, 2025:
Join Prison Policy Initiative’s Advocacy Department at 1 PM EST on Wednesday, March 19, 2025, for a webinar about understanding recidivism. We will cover strategies from our recidivism toolkit, including an overview of recidivism statistics and what they really mean, how to combat the “Willie Horton” effect, and ways that advocates can transform the narrative around reentry to make it less focused on negative outcomes and more focused on the ways that returning citizens contribute to their communities.
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