New statistics from the Department of Justice for the end of 2003:
- 1,470,045 men and women in state and federal prisons
- 742,430 in city and county jails and juvenile detention centers
- 2,212,475 total behind bars
- 44 percent are black
- 35 percent are white
- 19 percent are Hispanic
- 101,179 are women (6.9%)
An interesting side-by-side statistic would be to show how the population statistics break down nationwide. So, if 19% of inmates are Hispanic, how many Americans in general are Hispanic? If it was 9.5%, for example, then that would mean that the prision population is double what the the percentile of Hispanics is in the general population. Also, what percentage of our total population is in jail?
Of course a sociologist (or a bigot) could draw a lot of different conclusions from the side-by-sides. For example, one could ask: Are there twice as many Hispanics in jail as there are in the general population because they are more prone to crime, because they are less likely to get a fair shake in court, or because they facing economic hardships and hiring prujudices that are more likely to point them in that direction to begin with?
At the end of 2003, 9.3 percent of black men 25 to 29 were in prison, compared with 2.6 percent of Hispanic men and 1.1 percent of white men in the same age group.