Trends in Incarceration in the United States since 1880

Abstract

An examination of government reports on penal facilities in the United States published since 1880 reveals that the rate of incarceration in feder al, state, local, and juvenile correctional institutions has increased. The major changes in offense distribution are increases in the proportion of persons reported to be incarcerated for robbery and the proportion in carcerated for drug offenses. In the nineteenth as well as the twentieth century, persons born abroad, blacks, members of other nonwhite racial groups, and other non-English-speaking persons have constituted a large percentage of those incarcerated. Declines in the overrepresentation of the foreign born in the prisons and jails in the United States have been accom panied by increases in the proportion of black and Spanish-speaking in mates.