Black History

The United States is locking up people at an unprecedented rate. There are now 1.75 million people in state and federal prisons in the U.S.--up from 1 million people just four years ago. Young Black and Latino men are bearing the brunt of this. Over 70 percent of those imprisoned are Black, Latino or other people of color. For many youth, prison is a big part of the future they are handed by this system. According …

…prison population. Based on CDC estimates, two and three strikers will represent 49 percent of the prison population by the year 2024. As such, if the 13-fold overrepresentation for African Americans continues, the current starkly disparate incarceration rate for Blacks will substantially worsen." Four years after the passage of California's Three Strikes law we can see the real effect of the these laws--rising rates of incarceration, extremely long sentences for all kinds of offenses and massive injustice.