Racial disparities are increasing as the use of the death penalty declines.

In a four-part series examining the modern death penalty, The Intercept found that racial disparities are increasing as the use of the death penalty is decreasing. “Rather than becoming more equitable over time as new death sentences become rarer across the country,” reporters found, “the death penalty appears to be more racially biased than ever.”

In the first full decade after the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, 46% of those sentenced to die in current death penalty states were people of color. In the decade from January 2009 through December 2018, that percentage grew to 60%.

A similar trend can be seen across several leading death penalty states, and is especially stark in states with the largest death row populations. From 1976 to 1986, 51% of the people sentenced to death in Texas were people of color; that percentage grew to 75% in the past decade. Of just seven people Texas sent to death row in 2018, all of them were men of color. In California, the percentage increased from 52% to 78%; in Oklahoma, it more than doubled from 28% to 80%.

Finding that people of color are still overrepresented on death row as a whole, and that these discrepancies are getting worse as death sentences decline, the Intercept concluded that “the death penalty is as arbitrary as ever.”