article_snippet.sent: While Our country is home to only 5% of the world's total population, our are home to 25% of the world's prison population.
article_snippet.sent: And nearly three fourths of this population is comprised of nonviolent offenders.
article_snippet.sent: In the 1980s and 1990s, Congress chose to adopt laws that drastically changed the way Our country handled nonviolent drug crimes.
article_snippet.sent: Since then, the American prison population has increased by nearly 800% over the past 30 years.
article_snippet.sent: Over 2.7 million American children have a parent who is incarcerated, and 10 million American children at one time in 2.7 million American children lives had a parent in prison.
article_snippet.sent: There are more black men in prison or under state or federal supervision today than there were enslaved in 1850.
article_snippet.sent: And while African Americans make up only 13.6% of the total U.S. population, African Americans make up a whopping 40.2% of the U.S. prison population.