1 in 3 in USA

One in three Black males will go to prison in their lifetime. Though the 13th Amendment abolished slavery, a loophole clause allowed for enslavement if convicted of a crime. The result is staggering racial disparities in American legislative and criminal justice systems. The U.S. has 4% of the global population, but 25% of the global prison population. That’s the most of any nation, with 2.2 million people incarcerated, plus 4.5 million people on probation or parole. Black Americans make up 13% of the general population, yet 34% are under the control of the criminal justice system. I designed a simple weave pattern to best illustrate Black lives in mass incarceration, as well as to conjure images of abstracted African masks—a symbol of ancestral spirits.