Latinos and the prison system

Latinos and the prison system

• Latinos, who made up only 13 percent of the U.S. population in 2000, account for 20 percent of those incarcerated in state or federal prisons.   (“Prisoners in 2003,” Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2004)
• Latinos have one chance in six of being incarcerated during their lifetimes. (“Lost Opportunities:  The Reality of Latinos in the U.S. Criminal Justice System,” National Council of La Raza, 2004) 
• Half of the Latino federal prison inmates had no previous criminal record and were the least likely to be both violent and nonviolent recidivists.  Yet Latinos are less likely to be given probation or parole than non-Latinos.  (National Council of La Raza, 2002.)
• In nine states, between four and eight percent of adult Latino men are incarcerated. In 12 states, between two and four percent of Latino adults are incarcerated. (Human Rights Watch, 2002)
• Latinos accounted for nearly half – 43 percent – of those convicted of federal drug offenses in 2000. (U.S. Sentencing Commission, 2003 Datafile.)
• Of the Latinos sentenced for drug-trafficking crimes, 56.9 percent are for powder cocaine offenses, 64.6 percent are for heroin offenses, and 64.2 percent for marijuana.  (U.S. Sentencing Commission, 2003 Datafile.)
• As a group, Latinos serve the most five-year federal sentences and the second most 10-year sentences and 20-year sentences .

Federal sentence length by race/ethnicity

(Testimony of John Steer, vice chair, U.S. Sentencing Commission, before the House Governmental Reform Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, May 11, 2000) 

updated 4/06