The Sentencing Project released a new report titled “The Changing Racial Dynamics of Women’s Incarceration (PDF).” The report finds that:

From 2000-2009, black women’s rate of incarceration declined by 30.7%, while the rate for white women increased by 47.1% and for Latinas by 23.3%.

In 2000, black women were imprisoned at six times the rate of white women; by 2009, they were 2.8 times more likely to be in prison.

Several factors appear to be contributing to the racial changes in imprisonment among women:

1. Declining arrest rates for African American women, along with sharp reductions in incarceration for drug offenses in certain states.

2. Rising rates of imprisonment for white women for property crimes in particular, as well as for violent and drug offenses.

3. The cumulative social disadvantages that correlate with greater involvement in substance abuse and crime are increasingly affecting less educated white women.