Arts in the Age of Data: Trends in US Incarceration by Gender and Race, 1980-2019

If we want to challenge and disrupt long-held assumptions about the world around us, we increasingly need to tell our stories through data and reveal the limits of other people’s numbers. In our second year, Bristol Liberal Arts students take the Arts in the Age of Data unit, which empowers us to become critical citizens in this digital age. During the unit, we work in teams to apply quantitative research methods to topics that matter to us. Below Alekzandra Auton, Lucy Stephenson, Sophie Brown and Harry Jinks present their infographic based on their data project on incarceration in the USA.

We chose to do our data project on US incarceration rates as we are aware that the US had a shockingly high amount of incarceration compared to the rest of the world. What isn’t often spoken of, however, is ‘who’ is being affected by the American legal system which is what we wanted to uncover. The disparities between race and gender became evident from the very beginning of our research. It was clear that there was a disproportionate number of African Americans incarcerated, described by Michelle Alexander as ‘a new form of slavery’ that is so entrenched in the American system that it often goes unnoticed and unquestioned. We saw this highlighted through the high percentage of African Americans incarcerated which did not reflect the US demographic where there were a lot less in the population.

We also concluded from the data that there was a far greater number of men in prison than women. We noticed that this gender divide reflects most prisons across the world however the gender disparity in America is still shockingly large. It was evident from the data sheets that the disparity between races were slowly decreasing showing a more equal reflection of society, but the racial disparity remains.

By Alekzandra Auton, Lucy Stephenson, Sophie Brown and Harry Jinks.