Blacks and Prisons in California

I was appalled at how easy it was to spot prisons by looking at ratio of blacks to housing units. I knew that blacks were highly overrepresented in the prison system for many reasons -- poverty and discrimination have many ways of reducing opportunities and increasing the likelihood of being incarcerated -- but I still had a very visceral reaction to actually seeing it.

While not all census tracts with high blacks per housing unit have prisons, and not all prisons have a high number of blacks per housing unit, it is striking how often prisons have a high blacks per housing unit.

The darker the red, the more blacks per housing unit in that tract. Full red means that it's at the maximum; full white means it's at the minimum. (Note that you will have to zoom in to see the red tracts.)

Clicking on a marker will give you more detailed information about the facility (if I have it).

There are lots of county jails that are not on this map yet. County jails tend to be much smaller than the state jails.

You will have a better experience if you clear your browser's cache before doing much exploring of the map.