The incarceration rate of Black Americans has fallen sharply in the 21st century, according to a new study, but the trend has coincided with a rise in imprisonment of white Americans with no college education.

"The good news is that there have been absolute declines in the rate of imprisonment among Black Americans both with and without a college education," said Christopher Muller, co-author of the study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and professor of sociology at Harvard. "It seems likely, given what we're seeing in the data, that some of this has to do with the de-escalation of the drug war.

"The bad news is that some of the decline in racial inequality is driven by increases in the prison admission rate of white Americans with no college education, and that's happening for all offense types."

Data showed that from 1984 to 2019, the number of white Americans with no college education sent to prison more than doubled from roughly 60,000 in 1984 to around 160,000 in 2019.

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