In the United States, mass incarceration is at an all- time high and socially concentrated. Nowhere in the world is as high as our prison system. Since 1970, incarceration rates have quintupled, while the U.S. population itself has only grown by about 40% (Alexander,2010). The U.S. census report said black Americans were incarcerated in state prisons at an average rate of 5.1 times that of white Americans. In some states that rate was 10 times or more. According to the most recent census, the US is 63.7% non-Hispanic white, 12.2% black, 8.7% Hispanic white and 0.4% Hispanic black. The research found that in five states, the disparity rate was more than double the average. With a ratio of 12.2 black people to one white person in its prison system, New Jersey had the highest. With 2,625 black inmates people per 100,000 residents, Oklahoma had the highest rate of black people incarcerated. Oklahoma is 7.7% black. Among black men in 11 states, at least 1 in 20 were in a state prison.
In 2010, the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that in the United States an estimated 558,700 African American adults were incarcerated under state and federal jurisdiction. African American males had an imprisonment rate 3,059 per 100,000 while white males had a rate of 456 per 100,000 (Bureau of Justice Statistics). These results show African
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She describes how the criminal justice system befell the way it is today and gives an explanation and a pathway to fix mass incarceration in the criminal justice system. She goes into details referring to law policies and sentencing and how they have been extended. Therefore, guiding the reader to understand that in order to amend this problem we need to start with small alterations that will grow overtime to amend the bigger problem, going from the bottom up. She concludes in justifying the system as a political issue and not a crime and punishment