One in Twelve!

Ta-Nehisi Coates with some troubling statistics on how disproportionately large the American prison population is compared with the rest of the world, and how disproportionately Black it is.

Of the 2.3 million people in American jails, 806,000 are black males. African-Americans--males and females--make up .6 percent of the entire world's population, but African-American males--alone--make up 8 percent of the entire world's prison population. I know there are people who think some kind of demon culture could create a world where a group that makes up roughly one in 200 citizens of the world, comprises one in 12 of its prisoners. But I kind of doubt it.

H/T Andrew Sullivan