Incarceration and racism in the Americas: Notes for future internationally comparative research on racial inequality and imprisonment

Abstract

This study presents the first ever comparative regional portrait of racial inequality and incarceration across the Americas, using census data from Brazil, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the United States mainland. While racism is known to pervade criminal justice across the US mainland, Latin American prisons remain understudied, with the entire region often construed as racially harmonious and uniformly “mixed” rather than racially plural or stratified. Our findings reveal consistent underrepresentation of white individuals and overrepresentation of Black individuals in all countries. Mixed-race individuals in Brazil, Cuba, and Puerto Rico experience higher incarceration rates than whites but lower rates than Blacks. These findings challenge the conception that the US mainland is unique in its historically entrenched profile of structural racism, while highlighting varying degrees of racial inequality internationally. Whereas Cuba and the US mainland display relatively higher levels of racial inequality in imprisonment, Puerto Rico and Brazil display relatively lower levels.