Statistics of incarcerated African-American males

Researchers have been analyzing statistics on the incarceration in the United States of African-American males as to age, location, causes, and the impact on children. Approximately 12–13% of the American population is African-American, but they make up 35% of jail inmates, and 37% of prison inmates of the 2.2 million male inmates as of 2014 (U.S. Department of Justice, 2014). Census data for 2000 of the number and race of all individuals incarcerated in the United States revealed a wide racial disproportion of the incarcerated population in each state: the proportion of blacks in prison populations exceeded the proportion among state residents in twenty states.

According to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), African Americans constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population, and have nearly six times the incarceration rate of whites. A 2013 study confirmed that black men were much more likely to be arrested and incarcerated than white men, but also found that this disparity disappeared after accounting for self-reported violence and IQ. An August 2013, Sentencing Project report on Racial Disparities in the United States Criminal Justice System, submitted to the United Nations, found that "one of every three black American males born today can expect to go to prison in his lifetime".

The statistics for African-American males shows that one out of three black males will be arrested and sent to prison during their lifetime, and that between the ages of 20 to 34 one out of nine will be in prison. The rate of imprisonment in some portions of the United States is particularly high, with Oklahoma holding the highest overall black incarceration rate and the Sentencing Project noting that "In eleven states, at least 1 in 20 adult black males is in prison." In 2014 the U.S. Department of Justice found that the majority of male prisoners aged 30 to 39 were black (6%), a marked increase in comparison to Hispanics (2%) and Caucasians (1%) in the same age range. Maryland has a prison population that’s 72 percent black.

Several studies have concluded that overall, more black males are in prison than are enrolled in colleges and universities. In 2000 there were 791,600 black men in prison and 603,032 enrolled in college versus 1980, when there were 143,000 black men in prison and 463,700 enrolled in college. In 2003, according to Justice Department figures, 193,000 black college-age men were in prison, while 532,000 black college-age men were attending college. On an average day in 1996, more black male high school dropouts aged 20–35 were in custody than in paid employment; by 1999, over one-fifth of black non-college men in their early 30’s had prison records.

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