Numbers that Are Not New: African Americans in the Country's First Prison, 1790-1835
IN 1989 AFRICAN AMERICANS BETWEEN THE ages of 20 and 29 outnumbered all other racial groups in the state penal institutions of this country. Black men surpassed white men of the same age group in state prisons, numbering 138,706 to 138,111 white men. AfricanAmerican women were not far behind their white counterparts in this country's state prisons, totalling 6,072 and 6,320 respectively. The significance of these numbers becomes even more apparent when one considers that while African-American men constituted 50.1 percent of the state prison population, they only represented 13.4 percent of the U.S. male population between 20 and 29 years of age. A similar discrepancy holds true for black women, who composed 49 percent of the female prison population and 14.7 percent of the U.S. female population. In 1993 the rate of incarceration in the U.S. assumed even more dramatic proportions: "African Americans [were] incarcerated at a rate that is more than six times that of whites—1,947 per 100,000, compared to 306 per 100,000" [Marc Mauer, Americans Behind Bars: The International Use of Incarceration, 1992-1993 (Washington, D.C., 1994), p. 1]. The black imprisonment statistics for 1989 and 1993, however, are neither new nor unique in American history.