The Texas prison system has shifted more than 4,000 inmates out of solitary confinement over the past decade – but those who are still there are increasingly likely to be African-American, according to Texas Department of Criminal Justice data.

At the end of the 2008 fiscal year, 17.7 of the prisoners in administrative segregation were black; by the end of the last fiscal year, 24.7 percent were black.

Over the same time frame, the portion of administrative segregation inmates who are white decreased by 4 percentage points and the portion who are Hispanic dropped by just over 3  percentage points. Across all groups, the number of inmates in administrative segregation dropped.

Even as those shifts occurred, the overall prison demographics moved in the opposite direction. The portion of the prison population that is black was about 4 percentage points lower last year than it was in 2008, while a slightly larger fraction of TDCJ inmates are white or Hispanic.