Six Percent of Black Youths Behind Bars

By: Barnaby DingesOn a given day, more than 6 percent of Chicago's young black males are incarcerated, twice the rate of white and Hispanic males.

A Chicago Reporter analysis of Chicago prisoners ages 15 to 29 held in Cook County Jail and Illinois and federal prisons on August 31, 1989, showed that there were 9,968 blacks, 3,983 whites and 1,557 Hispanics.

This adds up to 15,508 young Chicago males in prison, roughly equal to the number of people living in Lake Forest.

These numbers, combined with 1989 population estimates from the city's Department of Planning, show that 6.1 percent of Chicago's black males ages 15-to 29 were imprisoned, compared to 3.2 percent of white males and 1.9 percent of Hispanics that age.

Norval Morris, a professor of law and criminology at the University of Chicago, estimates that nationwide 8 percent of black males in their 20s are in a U.S. prison or jail. The US Bureau of Justice Statistics puts the share at 6 percent.

But the incarceration figures grow when lifetime imprisonment rates are calculated. A study by The Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C. group that tracks prison populations, found that black males have an 18 percent chance of serving time in prison at some point in their lives, compared to 3 percent of white males.

Marc Mauer, The Sentencing Project's assistant director, said blacks now make up 48 percent of those incarcerated, up from 46 percent in 1985, while the percentage of Hispanic prisoners has risen from 10 percent to 12 percent. The US Census Bureau estimates that blacks are 12 percent of the US population, while Hispanics are 8 percent.

The group also found that the number of inmates in state and federal prisons has jumped 39 percent in recent years, from 759,122 in 1985 to more than 1 million at the end of 1989.