MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Black Americans are being disproportionately arrested and prosecuted at all levels of the US criminal justice system, compared to their white compatriots, a rights group said in a report published Wednesday.
"Racial disparities permeate every part of the US criminal justice system. While whites and African Americans engage in drug offenses at comparable rates, African Americans are arrested, prosecuted, and incarcerated for drug offenses at much higher rates," Human Rights Watch said in the World Report 2016, which reviews human rights practices in over 90 countries.
According to the rights group, black men are six times more likely to be imprisoned than their white peers, constituting almost 30 percent of all drug arrests.
The report follows widespread protests in 2015 in US cities such as Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland, over police killings of unarmed black individuals.
