title: Toward a Demographic Understanding of Incarceration Disparities: Race, Ethnicity, and Age Structure.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Non-Hispanic blacks and Hispanics in the United States are more likely to be incarcerated than non-Hispanic whites. The risk of incarceration also varies with age, and there are striking differences in age distributions across racial/ethnic groups. Guided by these trends, the present study examines the extent to which differences in age structure account for incarceration disparities across racial and ethnic groups.
  
  
  METHODS
  We apply two techniques commonly employed in the field of demography, age-standardization and decomposition, to data provided by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the 2010 decennial census to assess the contribution of age structure to racial and ethnic disparities in incarceration.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The non-Hispanic black and Hispanic incarceration rates in 2010 would have been 13-20 % lower if these groups had age structures identical to that of the non-Hispanic white population. Moreover, age structure accounts for 20 % of the Hispanic/white disparity and 8 % of the black/white disparity.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The comparison of crude incarceration rates across racial/ethnic groups may not be ideal because these groups boast strikingly different age structures. Since the risk of imprisonment is tied to age, criminologists should consider adjusting for age structure when comparing rates of incarceration across groups.
authors.affiliation: Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri-St. Louis, 539 Lucas Hall, St. Louis, MO 63121 USA ; OTB - Research for the Built Environment, TU Delft, Delft, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Matt
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Vogel
authors.affiliation: Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Maryland, College Park, MD USA.
authors.forename: Lauren C
authors.initials: LC
authors.lastname: Porter
keywords: Age structure; Demography; Incarceration