Pushing Toward Parity

The disproportionate representation of people of color in the criminal justice system has received substantial scrutiny from researchers, the media, and others concerned that disparities reflect enduring, systemic race-based bias. Academic literature has produced numerous explanations for racial differences in criminal involvement, from the economic and social legacy of slavery and Jim Crow laws to contemporary discrimination in housing and education systems, bias by criminal justice decision-makers, and the effects of harsher sentencing policies adopted in the 1980s and ‘90s. Disparities in imprisonment have narrowed over the past 20 years—and the Council on Criminal Justice launched the Pushing Toward Parity research series to find out why. To what extent is the criminal justice system reflecting or amplifying inequities in American society? How are different parts of the system working or not working to narrow the gaps? What policies and practices might accelerate progress? The first two reports, in 2019 and 2022, assessed national-level trends in disparity in probation, parole, jail, and prison populations, crime-specific changes in imprisonment disparities, differences in disparity by race and sex, and changes in reported offending rates and decisions at the key stages of criminal justice case processing. New reports in 2024 assess the impact of sentencing reforms on disparity trends in 12 states, examine imprisonment trends among female populations, and explore challenges in measuring of Hispanic disparities.