Are We Overstating Black Progress by Ignoring Prisoners?

Sociologist Becky Pettit has created a study evaluating the growing rate of black men incarcerated at an early age. She concluded that statistics undercount prisoners and former inmates, leading to an embellishment of African American progress:

The real problem, as Dr. Pettit sees it, is that imprisoned black men aren't figured into statistics about the standing of African-Americans. The consequence, she says, is an overstatement of black progress in education, employment, wages and voting participation…

If inmates were counted, she estimates, the black high school dropout rate would soar to 19 percent and the share of dropouts who are employed would plunge to 26 percent — far more dire than the statistics usually cited. The celebrated voter turnout among young blacks in the 2008 election would drop to roughly 20 percent, about where it was in 1980.

Blacks account for nearly half of the more than 2.3 million Americans in prison or jail. Failure to include them in measures of black progress, she argues, is akin to leaving states out of national counts….

Dr. Pettit stands by her premise: "Decades of penal expansion coupled with the concentration of incarceration among men, blacks and those with low levels of education have generated a statistical portrait that overstates the educational and economic progress and political engagement of African-Americans."

Instead of patting itself on the back for distorted measures of "success," the government should adopt clear-eyed policies that foster real racial equality — partly by creating a criminal justice system that's focused less on punitive incarceration and more on crime prevention and rehabilitation.