Yesterday I heard that blacks make up 12% of the population of the United States but something like 80% of the prison population. Does anyone know if this is true? And if it is-why do you think it is so?
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ANSWERS: 8
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I am not sure. I do know that blacks are no longer the minority and that more whites are on death row than any other race... that is about all I know on the statistics. I will try and find where the info can be found for you. Here ya go .. Hope this helps http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/reportingrace.htm http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/whats_new.html#latest http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/
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I've also heard that stat, and im not sure if its true or not, but I had to spend a night in jail one time and it was mostly black. I do live in cincinnati though, which has a higher African American population
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62.7 percent and whites 36.7 percent of all drug offenders admitted to state prison, even though federal surveys and other data detailed in this report show clearly that this racial disparity bears scant relation to racial differences in drug offending. There are, for example, five times more white drug users than black. Relative to population, black men are admitted to state prison on drug charges at a rate that is 13.4 times greater than that of white men. In large part because of the extraordinary racial disparities in incarceration for drug offenses, blacks are incarcerated for all offenses at 8.2 times the rate of whites. One in every 20 black men over the age of 18 in the United States is in state or federal prison, compared to one in 180 white men
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Well, racism and white privilege are alive and well in the US, so that could very well have something to do with it.
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That sounds close to the figures I heard about 10 years ago as a public defender. ______ Forgot to answer the second part. I think the main reason this is true is the difference in incomes re: national statistics. If white folks earned less $$. If there existed a black-run country where whites earned less money per capita, that whites would likely be disproportionately represented in the prisons.
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Likelihood of being targeted, arrested, and sentenced would be my guess for the top factor.
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"white 81.7%, black 12.9%, Asian 4.2%, Amerindian and Alaska native 1%, native Hawaiian and other Pacific islander 0.2% (2003 est.)" https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/print/us.html "At yearend 2005 there were 3,145 black male sentenced prison inmates per 100,000 black males in the United States" http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm Working it out 55% of male prisoners in USA are black in 2005. "Human Rights Watch Backgrounder April 2003" "Although blacks account for only 12 percent of the U.S. population, 44 percent of all prisoners in the United States are black " http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/usa/incarceration/
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I cant say about the validity of these figures but in all honesty your country's history probably owes to this problem. As hard as it is to understand segregation of a whole race that did not dissolve up until midway through the last centry, the problem itself will have many implications. Some of which will lay dormant and largely unoticed by the general populace. This is not to say that americans are raceist, it is to say, unfortunately your great country was founded on these principles, i.e blacks are inferior lol thats why they win you all your sporting comps! ;D (prehaps its no coincidence that America was one of the leaders in eugenics???) just a thought!
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