According to the BJS non-Hispanic blacks accounted for 39.4% of the prison and jail population in 2009, with whites 34.2%, and Hispanics 20.6%. The incarceration rate of black males was over 6 times higher than that of white males, with a rate of 4,749 per 100,000 US residents.
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Racial Disparities in Incarceration
African Americans now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population
African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites
Together, African American and Hispanics comprised 58% of all prisoners in 2008, even though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately one quarter of the US population
According to Unlocking America, if African American and Hispanics were incarcerated at the same rates of whites, today's prison and jail populations would decline by approximately 50%
One in six black men had been incarcerated as of 2001. If current trends continue, one in three black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime
1 in 100 African American women are in prison
Nationwide, African-Americans represent 26% of juvenile arrests, 44% of youth who are detained, 46% of the youth who are judicially waived to criminal court, and 58% of the youth admitted to state prisons (Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice).
http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet
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Some interesting aspects of this study of prison statistics are these:
California, which has the sixth largest economy in the world, (including its Silicon Valley), and a population that is 52% nonwhite, and is supposedly on the cutting edge of racial and social tolerance, has a prison population that is 69% nonwhite. And, of course, with a Black population that is only 7%, it has a prison population that is 32% Black. And this large population of Black inmates has helped this enlightened state to be the sixth state in incarceration rates.
http://www.gibbsmagazine.com/blacks_in_prisons.htm
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