In 1980, one in 10 black high-school dropouts were incarcerated - by 2008, that number was 37%

If current incarceration trends hold, fully 68% of African-American male high school dropouts born from 1975 to 1979 will spend time living in prison at some point in their lives. There are more African Americans under correctional control today — in prison or jail, on probation or parole — than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began. A black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery largely due to the fact that so many black men have been incarcerated for their criminal activities. Of course, all this would change if black males would just stay in school and stop breaking the law. Unfortunately, this does not seem likely to happen.