In 2017, blacks represented 12% of the U.S. adult population but 33% of the sentenced prison population. Whites accounted for 64% of adults but 30% of prisoners. And while Hispanics represented 16% of the adult population, they accounted for 23% of inmates.
Another way of considering racial and ethnic differences in the nation’s prison population is by looking at the imprisonment rate, which tallies the number of prisoners per 100,000 people. In 2017, there were 1,549 black prisoners for every 100,000 black adults – nearly six times the imprisonment rate for whites (272 per 100,000) and nearly double the rate for Hispanics (823 per 100,000).
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/30/shrinking-g...
As in, a huge majority of blacks in jails (jail population being disproportionally black).
Blacks are about 40% of the jail population and 14% of the general population.
Even if this is because blacks indeed commit more crimes, this points to the conditions blacks are forced to live (discrimination, poorly funded school districts, redlining, trouble getting loans, etc.) that force them to do so. But we also know that traditionally courts treat blacks harsher (to the point of there being special laws against blacks for most of the 20th century, from Jim Crow to seggregation laws, and of course, seemingly neutral laws used covertly with much more force against blacks, like drug laws, three strikes, and so on).