The United States has by an astronomical amount the largest proportion of its population in prison compared to other countries. Our competition, (though we still have them beat) are places like Russia and Uganda, and maybe China, though reliable statistics for China are hard to come by.

And while Blacks make up around 10% of the population of the country as a whole, they make up about 40% (FBP) of the prison population on the federal level and similar disparities are found at the state level.

Fifty percent of the prison population at both federal and state levels are for drug related offenses (Drugwarfacts.org). The war on drug that produced these figures has had no measurable effect on reducing drug use. It has been a boon to the prison industrial complex, and possibly the effect of increasing the power of drug cartels.

This is not to mention the well documented disproportionate violence against Black by police, too often resulting in death as well.

A further repercussion is that for the most part prisoners cannot vote, and in some cases that lack of ability to vote carries past being released, sometimes for life.

Now add to that the recent voter suppression laws, and we see a pattern of the disenfranchisement of the Blacks and the Black vote.

If you look at this by numbers, it would be easy to interpret this as a police state for Blacks.

(I was recently hearing that similar statistics—if not even worse, are true for the Native American population).