African Americans are incarcerated at more than 5 times the rate of whites.
Overall, African Americans are more likely than white Americans to be arrested. Once arrested, they are more likely to be convicted. And once convicted, they are more likely to face stiff sentences.
Since the beginning of the War on Drugs in the 1980s, the number of people incarcerated for drug offenses in the US skyrocketed from 40,900 in 1980 to 452,964 in 2017.
African Americans and whites use drugs at similar rates, but the imprisonment rate of African Americans for drug charges is almost 6 times that of whites.
In the 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, about 17 million whites and 4 million African Americans reported having used an illicit drug within the last month.
African Americans are incarcerated at more than 5 times the rate of whites.
If African Americans and Hispanics were incarcerated at the same rates as whites, prison and jail populations would decline by almost 40%.
As of 2017, North Carolina’s Black per capita adult imprisonment rate is 4.5 times higher than its white per capita rate.
In 2016, Black people accounted for 52.9% of the prison population and made up 21.5% of North Carolina’s overall adult population.
A 2013 study found that after adjusting for numerous other variables, federal prosecutors were almost twice as likely to bring charges carrying mandatory minimum sentences against black defendants as against white defendants accused of similar crimes.
A 2015 study of first-time felons found that while black men overall received sentences of 270 days longer than white men for similar crimes, the discrepancy between whites and dark-skinned blacks was 400 days.
Police are more likely to pull over black drivers than white drivers, according to a March, 2019 study in which researchers compiled and analyzed data from more than 100 million traffic stops throughout the US.
During routine traffic stops, black and Latino drivers are more likely to be searched for contraband — even though white drivers are consistently more likely to be found with contraband. A 2018 study of traffic stops in Vermont found that black drivers are up to four times more likely than white drivers to be searched during a traffic stop, even though white drivers are 30 to 50 percent more likely to be found with contraband.