2 things to add to this thread.
First, one has to realize the 1 in 142 figure actually understates the level of imprisonment. The "one out of 142" statistic is misleading as it is calculated by dividing total adults in prison by total population, including children.
If we look at adults only, there are 2.1 million adults in prison and 200 million adults in the USA (roughly out of our 280 million population), so we find that one out of 95 adults is in prison.
Let's look a little closer. There are 98 million adult males, and 1.9 million of them are incarcerated, so one out of every 52 adult males in the USA is in jail. (As opposed to only about one out of every 500 women).
And now let's just look at prison demographics for black males. Of the black males aged 20-39, one out of every eight is in jail. And that is only those CURRENTLY in jail, as opposed to those who were in jail at one time or another and then released.
To look at this another way:
South Africa under apartheid (1993), Black adult men: 851 per 100,000
U.S. (2001), Black adult men: 7,226 per 100,000
Second, to address the obvious question, well how many of them are actually non-violent offenders? A large share of the prison population are indeed non-violent offenders. Here are the official states from the Bureau of Justice Statistics:
More than 60 percent of all prisoners are incarcerated for non-violent offenses. 92 percent of wardens believed "Greater use should be made of alternatives to incarceration." They also stated that, "On average half the offenders under their supervision could be released without endangering public safety."
In addition, some 13% of all black men are not allowed to vote in the United States due to prior criminal records.
The sentencing rate of whites to blacks for drug possession is 1 to 10.
Now that I look at all this stuff in context, I also see an interesting unexplored link to a previous thread on GG looking at the demographics of who is serving in the US armed forces over in Iraq. Demographics show the inner-cities and upper-middle/upper class groups are under-represented and that white poor to blue collar middle America groups are over-represented. It is my understanding that you may not serve in the US armed forces with a felony on your record. So maybe the numbers were lower for inner-city black males in the armed sevices since one in eight black men 20-39 is currently in jail, and certainly many more are not in jail presently but have a felony on their record. What this means is a large segment of young black men have felonies and are prohibited from military service. However, I remember from the military demographics thread that one inner-city poor black group was quite over-represented: single black mothers.
The prison numbers on their own are disturbing. When you think how the felonies now prevent basically a whole segment of our population participating in elections, the military, etc. it speaks to our how free is the US thread elsewhere on this forum. Personally, I am all for putting violent offenders in prison. But, I find it ludicrious that so many tax dollars go to placing people who are non-violent offenders into long mandatory min. prison terms.
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