Mapinator: Imprisonment statistics by race

www.iSteve.com/05FebB.htm#maps.mapinator.red.blue.baby.gap

Maps of Imprisonment Statistics by Race: Ethan Herdrick, who is in the data map creation business, has graphed the NCIA's 1997 statistics on rates of imprisonment by state per 100,000 individual whites, Hispanics, or blacks. Some interesting, little known patterns emerge. Each ethnic group is on its own scale of yellow (good) to purple (bad).

The NCIA data is the best effort I've seen to solve the notorious problem with government crime rate data of lumping Hispanics in with whites in order to make the black to white ratio look a little less awful. Still, some of the states don't break out Hispanics at all, so they appear in black, and others don't do a trustworthy job. Still, this is better than anything else you've seen.

UPDATE: Using Ethan Herdrick's EZ-2-Use "Mapinator" program, I created these two maps showing the black to non-Hispanic white imprisonment ratio and the Hispanic to non-Hispanic white imprisonment ratio.

And here's another Mapinator graph showing the three ethnic groups' imprisonment ratios using the same yellow to purple color scale for each.

For Hispanics, you'll notice what appears to be a mulatto vs. mestizo vs. white imprisonment gap, with Puerto Ricans and Dominicans apparently being more likely to be in prison than Mexicans and Central Americans, with the Cubans the least likely. Or that could be related to urbanization.