African American men serve longer prison sentences than white men who have committed the same crime, according to a new study by the US government.
Black men are imprisoned on average 19 percent longer than white men for similar crimes, the study by the US Sentencing Commission shows.
The racial disparity in sentencing can't be accounted for by whether an offender has a history of violence, according to the study by the commission, an independent agency that is part of the US judicial branch.
The report is an analysis of demographic prison data collected from 2012 until 2016.
"Violence in an offender’s criminal history does not appear to contribute to the sentence imposed," the report said.
Black men received sentences that were on average 20.4 percent longer than that of white men when accounting for violence in an offender's past, according to the commission's analysis.
The findings also suggest that judges were more likely to pass down more lenient sentences to whites.
The report found that the disparity in the sentences handed down to blacks and whites has been exacerbated by the 2005 US Supreme Court decision in United States v. Booker.
Instead of being limited by recommendations of the guidelines, judges were free to impose harsher sentences when taking factors of the case into account.
The US has the world’s largest prison population, with 2.2 million people in prison as of 2015, a 500 percent increase over the last 40 years, according to a recent study by The Sentencing Project, a Washington, DC-based research and advocacy center.
The Sentencing Project also found that black men are about six times as likely as white men to be incarcerated, and Hispanic men are 2.3 times as likely.
Critics of the US prison system say that the stiff sentencing and racial disparities are contributing to the disproportionately large inmate population.