US prison population

"After decades of maintaining a largely steady level, in 1973, in the wake of the civil rights movement's tumult, the incarceration rate began rising sharply. By 2000, 3 percent of the US population was either locked up, on probation or on parole—a rate unparalleled worldwide. As Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, has demonstrated, this trend disproportionately affects people of color—the Justice Department has estimated that a third of black men and nearly a fifth of Latino men born in 2001 will go to prison in their lifetime—and now underpins the stark racial inequity found throughout US society."