The United States of America has 5% of the world’s population and yet 25% of the world’s prisoners are in American jails. And The number of prisoners in our prison system has increased to 8 times what it was 30 years ago.
And yet only 47% of our prisoners have ever been convicted of a violent crime.
32% of all black men (that’s one third) will spend time in our prisons and will serve 20% more prison time for the same crimes that white men are convicted and sentenced for. (according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission)
6% of all white men (that’s one seventeenth) will spend time in jail.
It costs 6.5 billion dollars every year to keep our prison system operating.
If racism in America is dead and a thing of the past…
Then how do we as American’s explain these numbers?
