Incarceration Rates

This article, in today's New York Times, states that one in 31 adults in the US is either in prison or on probation, with Blacks being ten times as likely as whites to be incarcerated. Yesterday, Badtux argued that the reason in some states for this discrepancy is politically driven racism. He referenced a Human Rights Watch report that while Blacks and whites have similar rates of drug use, Blacks are seventeen times more likely to be arrested for drug charges.

Badtux focuses on Florida, where he notes that 30% of the Black men are disenfranchised as a result. When he connects the dots, his conclusion is that the Republican Party is the major benefit of the disproportionality between the incarceration rates of Blacks and whites and this is a direct and planned result of the Republicans.

I'm not as certain as he is about this, but given what I've come to expect of the GOP and that Badtux is a son of the South, I would not be shocked if he was dead-nuts on about this.