9 Charts that Prove We Need Criminal Justice Reform Now

The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. And with about 2.3 million people behind bars, we also have the world’s largest prison population.

There is racial bias built right into the justice system. Black people are imprisoned more often than white people and receive longer sentences than white people, even for the same offenses.

Black students are twice as likely to be arrested or referred to law enforcement as white students. Black students also routinely receive harsher punishments than their white counterparts for the same or similar offenses.

Black men make up only about 13% of the US population, but they represent 35% of the US prison population.

Black people and white people use and sell drugs at similar rates, but Black people are almost three times more likely to be arrested for drug-related offenses.

We wonder if the fact that black people are incarcerated five times more often than white people, for example, might have something to do with the fact that prosecutors are overwhelmingly white? Prosecutors have also used their power to fuel mass incarceration.

Yes, the US locks up people who haven’t been convicted of anything — holding them for days, weeks, months, even years when they can’t afford to pay bail. Hundreds of thousands of them, every year. And it costs a lot of money.

Half of Americans have family members who’ve been incarcerated. 6.5 million Americans have an immediate family member in jail or prison right now. Again, communities of color are hit hardest: Black people are 50% more likely than whites to have an incarcerated family member.

By cutting crime while cutting their incarceration rates, states all across the country have showed that America’s “tough on crime” spree didn’t make us safe. All it did was pack jails and prisons with people of color and the poor—and line the pockets of everyone who profited from their misery.