american incarceration

The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.

Interested yet?

Check out an article from today's NYT here.

Also, more than 60% of the people in prison are now racial and ethnic minorities. For Black males in their twenties, 1 in every 8 is in prison or jail on any given day. These trends have been intensified by the disproportionate impact of the "war on drugs," in which three-fourths of all persons in prison for drug offenses are people of color.

For resources on that, check out the Sentencing Project's Racial Disparity site.