"Demographic characteristics among sentenced prisoners

"• At year-end 2018, an estimated 6% of sentenced white males in state and federal prisons were ages 18 to 24, compared to 12% of black and 10% of Hispanic male prisoners (table 9).

"• Three percent of male prisoners and 1.5% of female prisoners sentenced to more than one year in state or federal prison were age 65 or older at year-end 2018.

"Offense characteristics of federal prisoners

"• Almost half of prisoners sentenced to federal prison were serving time for a drug offense (almost all for drug trafficking) on September 30, 2018, the most recent date for which data are available (tables 15 and 16).

"• About two-fifths of federal prisoners in 2018 were in prison for a public-order offense (39%, or 63,600), including 18% (28,800) for a weapons offense and 6% (9,200) for a convicted immigration offense.

On December 31, 2015, state and federal prisons combined held a total of 1,476,847 people, of whom 499,400 were non-Latinx whites, 523,000 were non-Latinx blacks, 319,400 Latinx, and 135,100 whose race/ethnicity was counted as "other".

Click here for complete datatable of Number of People in the US Serving Time in State and Federal Prisons, by age, sex, race, and Latinx ethnicity, on December 31, 2015

"The spectacular growth in the American penal system over the last three decades was concentrated in a small segment of the population, among young minority men with very low levels of education. By the early 2000s, prison time was a common life event for this group, and today more than two-thirds of African American male dropouts are expected to serve time in state or federal prison.