As a team, the conversations we’ve had at Millie often led us to the broader question of — how do we zoom out from the current conversation and look at the systemic racism beyond policing. Where else is racism embedded? Where else can we make an impactful difference? While policing is one part of the criminal justice system, we were inspired by the work of so many great organizations focused on unjust prosecution and incarceration. Because ultimately, when you look at the numbers, the number of lives taken by wrongful convictions and harsh race-imposed sentencing are staggering.
This infographic dives into the racial inequity in the criminal justice system from policing to prosecution and incarceration. The statistics speak for themselves — Black adults are 5.9 times as likely to be incarcerated than whites, while almost half of people serving life sentences are African American.
The most staggering of all is looking at the average rate of incarceration across the globe. The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate by far and if you look at the incarceration rate of blacks in the U.S. the number is staggering next to other countries.
So much gratitude towards the sources behind the data — The Sentencing Project, Freakonomics, Equal Justice Initiative, and the ACLU.
