1 In 100, 1 In 9, 1 In 36

As noted in a New York Times editorial, 1 in 100 adults in the United States are currently in prison; the rate for African-American men is 1 in 9, for adult "Hispanic" men, 1 in 36. From the editorial:
--Reports by The Sentencing Project and Human Rights Watch "show large disparities in the rate at which blacks and whites are arrested and imprisoned for drug offenses, despite roughly equal rates of drug use."
--"Black men are nearly 12 times as likely to be imprisoned for drug convictions as adult white men . . ."
--"Between 1980 and 2003, drug arests for African-Americans in the nation's largest cities rose at three times the rate for whites, a disparity 'not explained by corresponding changes in rates of drug use,' The Sentencing Project finds."
--Four in 10 drug arrests are for possession of marijuana, and in 2006 there were 1.86 million drug-related arrests nationwide.
This is a crisis.