This post is prompted by an article that I read in the Guardian yesterday underscoring the fact that “More Black People are Jailed in England and Wales Proportionally than in the U.S.” You read that correctly this is NOT a mistake.

From the article:

The proportion of black people in prison in England and Wales is higher than in the United States, a landmark report released today by the Equality and Human Rights Commission reveals.

The commission’s first triennial report into the subject, How Fair is Britain, shows that the proportion of people of African-Caribbean and African descent incarcerated here is almost seven times greater to their share of the population. In the United States, the proportion of black prisoners to population is about four times greater.

So the jailing and imprisonment of Black people is apparently a worldwide phenomenon. No refuge is available to those of us who are considering moving overseas I guess. Let’s be clear that the article is highlighting a study that found that the PROPORTION of blacks imprisoned in England & Wales is higher than in the U.S. not the NUMBER of blacks imprisoned. This is important to keep in mind. This ties into the next issue that I want to raise.

In an August 2010 post, I highlighted the crisis in the U.S. regarding the imprisonment of young black men. I relayed the troubling figure that 68% of African American men born since 1975 who have dropped out of school have a prison record. I had found that statistics in materials distributed at a Disproportionate Minority Contact conference that I attended. The peril of quoting statistics where sources are not provided is that they can be misleading or completely erroneous.

Mark Parker gets at this issue in a recent article that he published called “The Simple Truth about Statistics.” From his article:

By their very nature, statistics can only be misused when the audience doesn’t bother checking them. Statistics are just a numerical summary of evidence that has been collected. They give people the starting point to delve directly into that evidence and see if the arguments hold together.

When misused, statistics are less Disraeli’s “damned lies” and more another leader’s “I did not have sexual relations with that woman”. It is by not presenting all of the information and selectively choosing definitions that statistics can appear to lie. But such claims will not stand up under cross-examination.

Just recently, I learned that the source for this statistic was actually the work of researchers Western and Pettit. So I am providing a more complete and accurate explanation of the original figure that I quoted.

In 1980, one in 10 black high-school dropouts were incarcerated. By 2008, that number was 37 percent. Western and Pettit calculated that if current incarceration trends hold, fully 68 percent of African-American male high school dropouts born from 1975 to 1979 (at the start of the upward trend in incarceration rates) will spend time living in prison at some point in their lives, as the chart below shows. (Source: Toxic Persons by Sasha Abramsky)

I have an out of print book that I love called “Black Is.” I feel that it is worth sharing two quotes from the book here:

Black is when they say “…one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all…” and you wonder what nation they’re talking about.

Black is being accused of causing trouble but always winding up as the casualties.

Some things to keep in mind…