1. Racial Inequality in Sentencing
The Three Strikes law aimed to target repeat offenders, but it has worsened racial disparities in sentencing. Black and Latino defendants face harsher penalties due to biases in arrests and prosecutions.
In counties that enforce the law aggressively, people often receive life sentences for minor offenses, reinforcing deep inequalities in the justice system.
The bar charts show striking racial disparities in California's prisons. Despite being smaller portions of the state's population, Black and Latino individuals make up over 70% of inmates. Black people account for 28% of prisoners but only 6% of California's population. Similarly, Latinos make up 46% of prisoners while being just 38% of residents.
Black individuals also face the highest imprisonment rate—over 1,600 per 100,000 residents—far exceeding rates for other racial groups. Clearly, prison demographics don't match California's population, but instead expose systemic biases that disproportionately affect communities of color.
Percent of People in Prison
Percent of the State Population
Imprisonment Rate (per 100K)
2. Second vs. Third Strikes
Our next visualization shows the distribution of sentencing lengths for Second and Third Strike offenders. Under California's Three Strikes Law, penalties become especially severe for those who receive a third strike.
As seen below, while second strikers (Blue) have a more distributed sentencing pattern across different sentence lengths, third strikers (Dark Purple) show extreme concentration in the 50+ months category, with nearly 67% receiving these lengthy sentences.
3. Poverty and Imprisonment
We also found a strong correlation between poverty and imprisonment rates across California counties. Counties with higher poverty rates consistently show higher incarceration rates, and this pattern persists year after year.
4. Imprisonment Costs
These charts reveal a troubling paradox in California's prison system: while imprisonment rates have steadily declined since 2009 (dropping from 660 to under 500 per 100,000), the associated costs have continued to rise.
Despite incarcerating fewer people, annual costs have increased from $138 million to over $160 million. We are actually not sure why this is the case, and further research is needed for why costs are still going up while imprisonment rates are decreasing.
These heatmaps show imprisonment rates and costs across California counties (2009-2016).
Darker colors indicate higher values.
Left: High incarceration rates in rural counties—Kings County peaks at 1568.5 per 100,000;
Tulare, Tehama, Shasta, and Yuba surpass 1000 per 100,000 at times.
Right: Imprisonment costs (2009-2011) vary widely. Los Angeles County spends $2.6B annually,
far exceeding others. Orange, San Bernardino, Santa Clara, and Riverside top $500M each year,
while smaller counties like Trinity, Modoc, and Alpine stay under $5M, despite high incarceration rates.