When Being Number One Is Not Good

Last night I watched 13^th, a Netflix documentary about the prison population of the United States. Other than saying it paints a depressing picture of the United States penal system I have nothing coherent to say. Instead, for now, I'll just include below a partial list of facts from the film.

The United States has 5% of the world's population and 25% of its prison population. (This sounded so outrageous that I had to fact check it. The New York Times gives the same statistics.) The U.S. has the highest rate of incarceration in the world.

It appears that the prison population started growing in the 70s. Here's the progression.

1970—357,290

1980—513,900

1985—759,100

1990—1,179,200

2000—2,015,300

2014—2,306,200

Black men make up 6.5% of the total United States population and 40.2% of the prison population.

One of three black males is expected to go to prison.

30% of black males in Alabama have lost the right to vote as the result of criminal convictions.

You can watch this documentary on Netflix on full screen. If you don't have Netflix, you can watch it online here in a partial screen.