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Nevada imprisons at higher rate than U.S.
Mark Robison , [email protected]
Published 1:32 p.m. PT Jan. 25, 2016 | Updated 6:58 a.m. PT Jan. 27, 2016
A reader asks whether mass incarceration exists in Nevada?
•Short answer: Yes. Nevada incarcerates people at a higher rate per capita than the United States, and it
imprisons African­Americans at more than three times their proportion in the general population.
Full question
(Photo: John Locher/AP)
The topic arose after a reader challenged an opinion writer in the Reno Gazette­Journal.
Abigail Polus of the community health center Northern Nevada HOPES wrote a column urging U.S. Sen.
Dean Heller, R­Nevada, to support the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act. The proposal would give judges more discretion in sentencing, allow
mandatory minimum sentences only in more serious cases, and allow some individuals currently in prison to have their sentences reduced.
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A Reno reader who goes by the pen name Oliver Howard wrote in questioning the column:
“Abigail Polus claims that ‘Mass incarceration has destroyed communities across Nevada and the country....’ While I'm not too curious about the
country, I am skeptical about this assertion in Nevada. So does her assertion have any merit locally? Is there mass incarceration here? My guess is
that Abigail may have conflated mere overcrowding, cited in her first graph, with the more cynical notion of mass incarceration. … I'm not curious
about the feds or other states. Abigail has charged Nevada with a serious wrong. But is she right?”
Full reply
First, a definition is important. Christopher Wildeman —an associate professor of sociology at Cornell University — defines mass incarceration this
way in his introduction to the subject (http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo­9780195396607/obo­9780195396607­0033.xml) for
the research site Oxford Bibliographies:
“Whether called mass incarceration, mass imprisonment, the prison boom, the carceral state, or hyperincarceration, this phenomenon refers to the
current American experiment in incarceration, which is defined by comparatively and historically extreme rates of imprisonment and by the
concentration of imprisonment among young, African American men living in neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage.”
To determine if this label applies to Nevada, a few statistics need to be determined: the rates of imprisonment in Nevada and America and the percent
of black Nevadans who are imprisoned compared with the percent of Nevadans who are black.
America is the poster child for imprisonment. The United States imprisons more Americans than China imprisons Chinese, even though four times
more people live in China. According to the latest figures from the Institute for Criminal Policy Research (http://www.prisonstudies.org/highest­to­
lowest/prison_population_rate?field_region_taxonomy_tid=All), the U.S. prison population is 2,217,000 while in China’s is 1,657,812.
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But what we care about is the rate of incarceration. The U.S. imprisons 698 out of every 100,000 people. For comparison, Cuba imprisons 510 out of
every 100,000 people, the Russian Federation 445, Iran 287, United Kingdom (England and Wales) 148, China 119, Canada 106, Indonesia 64,
Sweden 55 and Nigeria 31.
The United States makes up less than 5 percent of the world’s population, but holds more than 20 percent of its prisoners, according to the
International Centre for Prison Studies (http://www.prisonstudies.org/sites/default/files/resources/downloads/wppl_10.pdf).
Nevada’s rate of imprisonment is 712 per 100,000 — higher than the U.S. rate of 698 — according to a Wikipedia entry
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_incarceration_rate) that combines data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics with U.S. Census
Bureau state populations.
Nevada ranks 15th highest among states. Louisiana is No. 1 at 1,082 per 100,000 and Maine has the lowest rate at 285. In other words, the U.S. state
with the lowest incarceration rate has one about the same as Iran.
A February 2015 report by the Nevada Department of Corrections
(http://doc.nv.gov/uploadedFiles/docnvgov/content/About/Statistics/Forecast_and_Planning/Nevada_Spring%202016_NDOC_932015_FINAL.pdf)
shows that over 10 years from 2003­13, Nevada’s reported crime rate fell 30.1 percent while its prison population increased 23.7 percent.
The Nevada Department of Corrections responded to a request by the Reno Gazette­Journal with prison statistics broken down by race and ethnicity
based on the prison population as of Jan. 4.
The data show a total prison population of 13,286, with 5,858 whites; 3,887 blacks; 2,793 Hispanics; 365 Asians; and other races and ethnicities
represented by smaller numbers.
The Kaiser Family Foundation website shows state populations broken down by race and ethnicity (http://kff.org/other/state­indicator/distribution­by­
raceethnicity/) using the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2015 Current Population Survey. According to it, whites make up 50 percent of Nevada’s population,
blacks 9 percent, Hispanics 28 percent and Asians 9 percent.
Combining this data, we can look at whether blacks are disproportionately represented in Nevada’s prison system compared to their representation in
the general population, as well as how other groups fare.
•Blacks represent more than 29 percent of Nevada’s prison population vs. 9 percent of the general population.
•Whites represent 44 percent of prisoners vs. 50 percent general.
•Hispanics represent 21 percent of prisoners vs. 28 percent general.
•Asians represent less than 3 percent of prisoners vs. 9 percent general.
When asked about reasons for these disparities among prisoners, a spokesperson for the Nevada Department of Corrections said, “We are in the
business of housing people, we have no ability to estimate the reasons people arrive at our door.”
To recap, general rates of imprisonment higher are in Nevada than nationally and African­Americans are disproportionately represented in Nevada
prisons. Wilderman, who defined mass incarceration, was asked if these statistics make Nevada a mass incarceration state.
“Yup, that would qualify it,” he said.
The reader who asked if Nevada is a mass incarceration state also wondered if the label applies locally. It does.
Before people are sent to prison, they go through the jail system, where they are held after arrest.
The Washoe County Sheriff’s Office gave a racial and ethnic breakdown of the county jail’s population on Jan. 7. The jail holds people brought in by all
law enforcement jurisdictions in the county, including Reno and Sparks.
The emailed report for the RGJ includes a comparison between jail detentions and the county population, based on the 2010 Census. It says, “There
were 9,814 African Americans residing in Washoe County, which equates to 2.6% of the overall population” and “The Washoe County Detention
Center in­custody snapshot has a total of 148 African­Americans, which equates to 13.7% of the overall in­custody demographic.”
In other words, blacks are held in the Washoe jail at more than 5 times their representation in the county.
Whites are 85.3 percent of the county population and 58.6 percent of the jail population, while Hispanics make up 23.5 percent of the county
population and 22.4 percent of the jail population.
In response to questions about this disparity, the report says, “While the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office manages the regional detention facility, the
Washoe County Sheriff’s Office is responsible for a small percentage of the arrests discussed in this report and, as such, cannot speak to arrest rates
or practices for other agencies.”
The report also broke down the current jail population by whether detainees were local residents: 56 percent of inmates had an address inside the
county, 20 percent outside the county and 24 percent had no fixed address or unknown.
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