WS MoreOrLess: Black prisoners in the US

Summary

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Podcast Summary: More or Less – Black Prisoners in the US

Host: Ruth Alexander (BBC Radio 4)
Episode: WS MoreOrLess: Black prisoners in the US
Date: February 28, 2015

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Overview

This episode examines claims made by musician John Legend during the 2015 Oscars, specifically his statement that “there are more black men under correctional control today than there were under slavery in 1850.” Ruth Alexander, with contributions from Wesley Stevenson, methodically unpacks the numbers behind this headline-grabbing statistic. The hosts further contextualize the data, comparing historical and contemporary population figures, and broaden the discussion to mass incarceration rates in the US compared to other countries.

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Key Discussion Points

1. John Legend's Oscars Claim Deconstructed

• Background: In his Oscars acceptance speech, John Legend highlighted ongoing inequality in the US, claiming more black men are now under correctional supervision than were once enslaved.
  • “He said there are more black men under correctional control today than there were under slavery in 1850.” (Ruth Alexander, 00:32)

The Numbers on Slavery (1850)

• Total African American slaves in the 1850 US Census: 3.2 million.
  • Of those, almost half (1.5 million) were children, and 870,000 were women.
  • Male slaves aged 15 or over: about 875,000. (Wesley Stevenson, 01:44)

The Numbers Today

• Modern correctional control: ~2 million African American men are either in state & federal prisons, local jails, or on probation/parole.
  • “There are almost 2 million African American men in either state or federal prisons, local jails, or on probation or parole…” (Ruth Alexander, 01:53)
• Statistical verdict: Legend is correct in the raw numbers; there are more than twice as many black men under correctional control now than were enslaved adult males in 1850.

The Fairness of the Comparison

• Population growth effects:

  • “It's not exactly a fair comparison because that doesn't take into account population growth over the last 165 years.” (Wesley Stevenson, 02:13)
  • The African American population is about ten times larger today.

• Proportion differences:

  • In 1850, nearly 90% of African American men were slaves; now, about 10% are under correctional control.
    • “The picture's reversed.” (Wesley Stevenson, 02:39)

• Notable quote:

  • “10% of black men under correctional control is still a sizeable number.” (Ruth Alexander, 02:41)

2. Racial Disparities in Incarceration Rates

• Black men are “roughly six times” more likely to be in state or federal prison than white men.
• This stark gap underscores the depth of present-day racial inequality in the criminal justice system.

3. America as “The Most Incarcerated Country”

• John Legend’s second claim: The US is the most incarcerated country in the world.
• Raw numbers: 2.2 million prisoners in the US, more than any other country.
  • China, despite its much larger population, has an official prisoner count of about 1.7 million.
• Prison rate perspective:
  • The US has 707 prisoners per 100,000 population (second only to Seychelles, which is likely a statistical anomaly due to its small size).
    • “The US is second place in terms of prisoner rate with 707 prisoners per 100,000 people.” (Ruth Alexander, 03:38)
• US vs. peer countries:
  • The American rate is “five or six times higher than countries you'd expect it to be on par with – like Canada and those in Western Europe.” (Ruth Alexander, 03:38)
• Possible explanations: Vigorous legal system, high conviction numbers, and tough sentencing laws.
  • “Experts point to a vigorous legal system, a high number of convictions, and tough sentencing.” (Ruth Alexander, 04:11)

4. Sources and Data Integrity

• Special thanks to Mark Maurer (Sentencing Project, Washington) for the data work on these numbers.
  • “We must say thank you to Mark Maurer of the Sentencing Project for crunching those prisoner numbers…” (Wesley Stevenson, 04:11)

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• On historical shock:

  • “That's almost half the total slave population, which is just shocking to me.” (Ruth Alexander, 01:27)

• On reversing societal proportions:

  • “In 1850, almost 90% were slaves, whereas today, about 10% of African American men are under correctional control…So the picture's reversed.” (Ruth Alexander & Wesley Stevenson, 02:32–02:39)

• On international comparisons:

  • “China's population is four times bigger than the US's, and yet China's second in the list…” (Ruth Alexander, 03:15)

• On the importance of proportionality:

  • “The really important number to look at isn't total number of prisoners, but the prisoner rate, the number of prisoners per hundred thousand people…” (Wesley Stevenson, 03:32)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• 1850 slave numbers and composition: 01:21–01:44
• Today’s correctional figures: 01:53–02:13
• Population-adjusted analysis: 02:13–02:39
• Contemporary comparison – black vs. white prisoners: 02:41–03:02
• US/global incarceration rank: 03:02–03:38
• Reasons for US incarceration rate: 03:38–04:11
• Credits for data analysis: 04:11

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Tone & Language

The conversation is thoughtful, rigorous, and empathetic, balancing the discomfort of historical realities with analytical clarity. The hosts debunk and contextualize high-profile claims without diminishing the gravity of mass incarceration or historical slavery.

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For listeners seeking a clear, critical breakdown of how today’s incarceration rates for black men in the US compare to the era of slavery—and how the US stacks up internationally—this episode delivers statistical insight with clarity and care.

Transcript

[Ruth Alexander]

This is the short edition of More or Less, first broadcast on the BBC World Service.

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Thank you for downloading from the BBC. For details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use, go to bbcworldservice.com podcasts

[Ruth Alexander]

hello and welcome to More or Less on the BBC World Service. I'm Ruth Alexander.

[Wesley Stevenson]

One day when the glory comes, it will be ours.

[Ruth Alexander]

It will be out. And it was glory for singer, songwriter John Legend and the rapper Comment at this year's Oscars. They won best song for this track, Glory, from the film Selma, which is about Martin Luther King and the campaign for voting rights for African Americans in 1965. In his acceptance speech, Legend made the point that inequality in the US Is still a problem. He said there are more black men under correctional control today than there were under slavery in 1850. Is that true? Well, let's start with the United states census of 1850, which makes for uncomfortable reading, I have to say. Wesley Stevenson's been looking at the numbers with me. So whereas the total number of African American slaves was 3.2 million.

[Wesley Stevenson]

Yes, that's right. But not all of them were men, though. Almost one and a half million are children.

[Ruth Alexander]

And that's almost half the total slave population, which is just shocking to me.

[Wesley Stevenson]

And another 870,000 of them were women.

[Ruth Alexander]

But John Legend was making a claim about the number of men who were enslaved in 1850 versus the number of men who were under correctional control, as he puts it, in the US today.

[Wesley Stevenson]

Yeah. And the 1850 census shows there were almost 875,000 male slaves who were aged 15 or over.

[Ruth Alexander]

Whereas today it's estimated that There are almost 2 million African American men in either state or federal prisons, local jails, or on probation or parole, that is out of prison but under supervision. So John Legend's correct to say that there are more black men under correctional control than were enslaved in 1850. Just over twice as many.

[Wesley Stevenson]

But it's not exactly a fair comparison because that doesn't take into account population growth over the last 165 years.

[Ruth Alexander]

Yeah, and there are many more African Americans living in the United States today. Ten times as many. So when you take that into account, the picture does change.

[Wesley Stevenson]

In 1850, most African American men, almost

[Ruth Alexander]

90%, were slaves, whereas today, about 10% of African American men are under correctional control.

[Wesley Stevenson]

So the picture's reversed.

[Ruth Alexander]

Although 10% of black men under correctional control is still a sizeable number. Looking at it another way, there are roughly six times more black men than white in a state or federal Prison in America. John Legend also made another claim in his Oscars speech. He said that the US is the most incarcerated country in the world.

[Wesley Stevenson]

Is he right about that?

[Ruth Alexander]

Well, there are 2.2 million prisoners in the US, which is more than in any other country. But of course, it's got a big population, so you'd expect it to have a lot.

[Wesley Stevenson]

Well, yes, it's big, but it's no China.

[Ruth Alexander]

Well, that's true. China's population is four times bigger than the US's, and yet China's second in the list, with about 1.7 million prisoners. Half a million fewer. But experts suspect that there are more prisoners in China than official figures show. And the really important number to look at isn't total number of prisoners, but

[Wesley Stevenson]

the prisoner rate, the number of prisoners per hundred thousand people in the general population.

[Ruth Alexander]

And in the us, that number is very high. It's not at the top of the table. The Seychelles is bizarrely. But that's a very small country and experts say it's likely to be a blip. So the US is second place in terms of prisoner rate, with 707 prisoners per 100,000 people. Experts say that's five or six times higher than countries you'd expect it to be on a par with, like Canada and those in Western Europe. So why is that? Well, there's debate about exactly why, but experts point to a vigorous legal system, a high number of convictions and tough sentencing.

[Wesley Stevenson]

We must say thank you to Mark Maurer of the Sentencing Project in Washington for crunching those prisoner numbers for us this week. Now, if there are any numbers you'd like us to explore, do email us. Our address is more or [e-mail]. now, Ruth, I saw that Lego has been celebrating a 15% rise in sales and profits because they were on the brink of collapse 15 years ago, apparently. So it's quite a comeback.

[Ruth Alexander]

It is. But, you know, whereas that's not the real important question about Lego, as loyal listener Martin McManus knows, how many Lego

[Dr. Ian Johnston]

bricks stacked one on top of the other would it take to destroy the bottom brick?

[Ruth Alexander]

Martin had seen the weighty issue being pondered extensively on the website Reddit and thought we might have something to add. We got straight onto our friends at the Open University Engineering Department in the uk.

[Wesley Stevenson]

You'd have thought that they'd think we shouldn't be wasting their time, is such a question.

[Ruth Alexander]

Well, yes, but in fact, they got the lab all fired up and invited me over. Lecturer Dr. Ian Johnston was at the vanguard.

[Dr. Ian Johnston]

That's an Interesting question. I'm just surprised that I couldn't find the answer. When you first got in touch, my natural response was to say, well, just Google it. Crush strength of a LEGO brick. Somebody must have done it. To my surprise, I found a lot of speculation about what it is, but no clear evidence about what it is.

[Ruth Alexander]

How do we go about working this out?

[Dr. Ian Johnston]

There are several ways of approaching it, but the way I'm going to do it today is we're going to find what load, what force is required to crush a LEGO brick, and then we're going to work out what mass that corresponds to sitting on top of the LEGO brick. A mass is not a force, but a mass produces a force because of gravity. Once we know that mass, and we know the mass of one LEGO brick, we know how many LEGO bricks, we had to produce the right mass to produce the right force to crush the LEGO brick. This is a servo hydraulic testing machine. There's a hydraulic pump which runs a hydraulic ram pushing a plate upwards on which we've got a LEGO brick. Sitting on top of that, there's another plate with a load cell on top, which measures the force on the LEGO brick as it's compressed. And because we're beginning to get a little bit nervous about the number of bits that might fly into and it's failing, we're setting it up to do it automatically so that we could all back out of the room so that none of us is in range when the thing goes bang.

[Wesley Stevenson]

So there was one poor little LEGO brick sat between two metal plates?

[Ruth Alexander]

Yes, it was a two by two LEGO brick. And the load on top of it got larger and larger and then. Wait for it.

[Ed Diamond]

Yeah.

[Ruth Alexander]

Nothing.

[Wesley Stevenson]

Nothing.

[Ruth Alexander]

Well, not much.

[Dr. Ian Johnston]

Ah, it's bulging. Oh, no, it isn't. I was looking at the nut at the top, it stopped doing anything. Four and a half kilonewtons. We're just approaching half a ton now. It's hardly increasing anymore. It's more or less constant.

[Ruth Alexander]

What does that mean?

[Dr. Ian Johnston]

It means we've probably got a material failure and the material is just flowing out of the way now and not able to take it anymore.

[Wesley Stevenson]

So there was no big bang moment?

[Ruth Alexander]

No, the brick just kind of melted.

[Wesley Stevenson]

Oh, well, I'll take my safety goggles off then, in that case. So how many LEGO bricks stacked one on top of the other would it take to destroy the bottom brick roof?

[Ruth Alexander]

Well, Ian and the team did two more tests to be sure we hadn't just happened upon the strongest LEGO brick in existence. And in fact, they were Impressed at the consistency of Lego manufacture.

[Wesley Stevenson]

Other plastic building kits are available.

[Ruth Alexander]

They're not as good, though.

[Wesley Stevenson]

You can't say that.

[Ruth Alexander]

Well, anyway, the final result is the

[Dr. Ian Johnston]

average of the three, which is pretty tightly clustered together, which gives me confidence, is 4,240 Newtons. That's equivalent to a mass on top of the thing, of 432kg, a 1.152 grams per brick. That's 375,000 bricks. A few more, but we'll ignore that it's experimental error, giving us a grand total height of 3591 meters.

[Ruth Alexander]

375,000 bricks towering 3.5 kilometers high is what it would take to break a lego brick. A 2x2 brick, that is. Ian reckons a 2x4 rectangular brick would fail sooner. And a 1x2 brick could probably take a bit more.

[Wesley Stevenson]

And Ian would like to meet a Lego builder who could build a 3.5 kilometer tower in reality. Do you know one?

[Ruth Alexander]

Well, I thought I might. Duncan Titmarsh from Bright Bricks is an official Lego builder.

[Wesley Stevenson]

This man is certified. Well, if he can't do it, no one can.

[Ruth Alexander]

Well, that's what I thought. So I went to see him and his business partner, Ed diamond at their warehouse, where they were putting the finishing touches to a big LEGO structure for the tourist and shopping crowds at Covent Garden in London. Do you think it'd be possible to build a structure that was three and a half kilometers high?

[Dr. Ian Johnston]

Um, no.

[Ruth Alexander]

I wish you could see people's faces on the radio because yours was a picture. Then.

[Ed Diamond]

If you try stacking two by two bricks, as soon as you get beyond three or four metres tall, there's almost no way that you can take out all of the kinks and the loading and any amount of movement in the air. So it would be totally structurally impossible to do it. Whilst it's an interesting theory, the real

[Wesley Stevenson]

world can be so disappointing sometimes.

[Ruth Alexander]

I know. Well, that's all the weight of numbers I think Wes can bear this week. But please keep your questions and comments piling in via more or lessbc.co.uk. we can take the pressure, really. Our website with articles and a downloadable version of this program is BBC.com more or less.

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