THE ABSOLUTE GAP BETWEEN BLACK AND WHITE INCARCERATION RATES FELL BY 47%, WITH THE LARGEST REDUCTIONS AMONG GROUPS HISTORICALLY INCARCERATED AT THE HIGHEST RATES, THOUGH SIGNIFICANT DISPARITIES REMAIN.
Editor’s note: The California Policy Lab is hosting a policy briefing in Sacramento, on Monday, Nov 9th, focused on this new research. Registration is open.
Berkeley, CA, Nov 5th, 2026 — A new policy brief and working paper released today by the nonpartisan California Policy Lab (CPL) and the Committee on Revision of the Penal Code (CRPC) finds that criminal justice reforms enacted during the past two decades have led to substantial reductions in racial and ethnic disparities in incarceration in California. Between 2010 and 2024, the Black-White incarceration gap fell by 47%, the American Indian-White gap fell by 34%, and the Hispanic-White gap fell by 31%.
California’s prison population peaked at roughly 176,000 people in 2006, with Black and American Indian Californians incarcerated at the highest rates. However, starting in 2011, the state began implementing a series of reforms to sentencing and release policies, and California’s prison population decreased to roughly 89,000 people by August 2026.
The new research shows that racial and ethnic groups with the highest incarceration rates before the reforms saw the largest drops in the number of people incarcerated per 100,000 residents. These are known as “absolute” declines, as opposed to relative declines. Large relative disparities between groups remain (for example, the incarceration rate for Black Californians is roughly 8.5 times greater than the White incarceration rate), but far fewer people in every group are in prison today than before the reforms.
“California has cut its prison population nearly in half, and racial and ethnic disparities in incarceration have narrowed dramatically. This was driven by the fact that incarceration rates fell the most for members of racial and ethnic groups with the highest incarceration rates. Despite these changes, there are still large disparities and Black Californians and American Indian Californians in particular are incarcerated at relatively high rates,” explained co-author Steve Raphael, Faculty Director at the California Policy Lab’s UC Berkeley site and a public policy professor at UC Berkeley.
Key Findings
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- The absolute Black-White incarceration gap narrowed by 47%.
- From 2010 to 2024, the Black-White incarceration gap fell by 47%, the American Indian-White gap fell by 34%, and the Hispanic-White gap fell by 31%.
- The groups with the highest starting rates saw the biggest drops: the Black incarceration rate fell from 2,266 to 1,179 per 100,000 residents, while the White rate fell from 288 to 139.
- Each major reform lowered incarceration rates the most, in absolute terms, for the groups that started with the highest rates.
- Before Assembly Bill 109 (2011), also known as “Corrections Realignment,” Black and American Indian Californians were sent back to prison for parole violations at roughly four to six times the White rate. Afterward, returns for every group fell to near zero.
- Proposition 36 (2012) led to the release of more than 2,200 people serving third-strike life sentences, and the drop in these sentences was largest for Black and American Indian Californians.
- In the two years after Proposition 47 (2014) took effect, incarceration rates fell by 105 per 100,000 for Black Californians, fell by 47 for American Indian Californians, and fell by 15 for White Californians.
- Changes to long prison sentences contributed substantially to narrowing disparities.
- Courts now apply sentence enhancements less often, and more people serving very long terms are eligible for parole release. The number of people who have been incarcerated 25 years or more fell from nearly 18,000 in 2014 to fewer than 10,000 by 2024.
- The absolute Black-White incarceration gap narrowed by 47%.
- Despite these trends, substantial disparities remain.
- As of December 2024, about 1.2% of Black Californians were in state prison, nearly 8.5 times the rate for White Californians (0.14%). The comparable percentages for American Indian, Hispanic, and Asian Californians are 0.77%, 0.27% and 0.02%, respectively.
The reforms covered by this research include:
1) Corrections Realignment (2011) which ended most returns to prison for parole violations and shifted incarceration for lower-level felonies from state prison to county jails and probation.
2) Proposition 36 (2012) narrowed California’s Three-Strikes Law, limiting 25-years-to-life sentences to cases where the third felony was serious or violent, and allowing resentencing of people serving life terms for a third, non-serious, non-violent felony.
3) Proposition 47 (2014) reclassified many drug and theft felonies into misdemeanors.
4) Multiple reforms to sentence enhancements limited the extra years added to sentences for things like prior convictions, gang involvement, or gun use.
5) Multiple expansions of parole eligibility, including for older people and for people who committed their offenses when they were young.
Additional background
CPL conducted this study through a research partnership with the Committee on Revision of the Penal Code, a state agency that studies and makes recommendations to improve California’s criminal justice system. The brief summarizes the technical report “The Impact of California Criminal Justice Reforms on Inter-Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Prison Incarceration” by Steven Raphael, Mia Bird, Johanna Lacoe, Nefara Riesch, and Alissa Skog, which contains the reform-by-reform analyses and all figures and tables.
The data come from California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation records on prison populations from 2005 through 2024, and from U.S. Census Bureau population estimates. Race and ethnicity categories reflect how arresting officers, courts, or prison officials recorded each person, not how people describe themselves. The brief covers state prisons only. It does not measure how the reforms affected crime; earlier research on Realignment and Proposition 47 generally found no effect on violent crime.
Acknowledgements
Support for this research was generously provided by the California Committee on Revision of the Penal Code and Arnold Ventures. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of our funders. All errors should be attributed to the authors.
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The California Policy Lab generates research insights for government impact. Through hands-on partnerships with government agencies, CPL performs rigorous research across issue silos and builds the data infrastructure necessary to improve programs and policies that millions of Californians rely on every day.