Summarizes the data associated with prisoner populations in the U.S. at the end of 2009. As you will see, state and federal prisons housed approximately 1,613,656 prisoners at that time. About 87% of those inmates were serving time in a state prison and the remaining 13% in a federal facility. This represents very little growth in the prison population from the previous year. While it is good to see that prisoner populations are on the decline, the U.S. incarceration rate still remains one of the highest among industrialized countries. Further, there are ample data that indicate there is a disproportionate representation of blacks/African-Americans in U.S. prisons. Thus, there are many critical issues associated with incarceration. This exercise contains two parts of questions:

1. First, what might explain U.S. prison populations?

2. Second, should we be concerned about the over-representation of minorities in the U.S.? Why or why not?