United States Maintains World's Largest Prison Population with Racial Disparities

By 2015, the U.S. incarcerated 2.3 million people — the largest prison population in the world and 25% of the global total despite having 5% of world population. Black Americans were incarcerated at 5.1 times the rate of white Americans. One in three Black men born in 2001 could expect to be incarcerated in their lifetime. The War on Drugs, mandatory minimum sentences, and three-strikes laws enacted in the 1980s–1990s drove the rise. Although drug use rates are similar across racial groups, Black Americans were 3.73 times more likely than white Americans to be arrested for marijuana possession in 2018.