Where do you get your information? Certainly not from the census.
There were 40 million black Americans on the eve of the
2010 Census.
No one has said that half of the black population is in prison. That's a strawman you created.
Fact is:
•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).
Ok just so you guys know, Lonestar posted from this link here:
Criminal Justice Fact Sheet | NAACP
What Lonestar failed to mention was the following statistics:
Drug Sentencing Disparities
About 14 million Whites and 2.6 million African Americans report using an illicit drug
5 times as many Whites are using drugs as African Americans, yet African Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of Whites
African Americans represent 12% of the total population of drug users, but 38% of those arrested for drug offenses, and 59% of those in state prison for a drug offense.
Aristotle: Regarding this fact, as you can see from the NAACP report majority of African-American in prison are in for drug related offenses not violent ones.
African Americans serve virtually as much time in prison for a drug offense (58.7 months) as whites do for a violent offense (61.7 months). (Sentencing Project)
According to Americanprogress.org
"According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, one in three black men can expect to go to prison in their lifetime. Individuals of color have a disproportionate number of encounters with law enforcement,
indicating that racial profiling continues to be a problem. A report by the Department of Justice found that blacks and Hispanics were approximately three times more likely to be searched during a traffic stop than white motorists. African Americans were twice as likely to be arrested and almost four times as likely to experience the use of force during encounters with the police."
Sounds fair? I've been stopped and search before by Police coming home from school, and even though I was walking with a UCLA backpack, it made no difference.
Furthermore it states:
"Once convicted, black offenders receive longer sentences compared to white offenders.
The U.S. Sentencing Commission stated that in the federal system black offenders receive sentences that are 10 percent longer than white offenders for the same crimes. The Sentencing Project reports that African Americans are 21 percent more likely to receive mandatory-minimum sentences than white defendants and are 20 percent more like to be sentenced to prison."
I'll finally end this response with the following:
"Theses racial disparities have deprived people of color of their most basic civil rights, making criminal-justice reform the civil rights issue of our time. Through mass imprisonment and the overrepresentation of individuals of color within the criminal justice and prison system, people of color have experienced an adverse impact on themselves and on their communities from barriers to reintegrating into society to engaging in the democratic process. Eliminating the racial disparities inherent to our nation’s criminal-justice policies and practices must be at the heart of a renewed, refocused, and reenergized movement for racial justice in America."
As you can see the legal system is biased to people of color. Remember these are non-violent offenses, which are polar opposite of the constant rabble about "blacks being violent."