There are a lot of POOR people, who have committed victimless crimes, who are locked up.  "Conservatives got tough on crime and inaugurated the biggest prison building scheme in world history. Driven by slogans like 'three-strikes-you're-out' and 'truth-in-sentencing,' U.S. prison populations have quadrupled since 1980. More than two million Americans wake up behind bars every morning, and one in 15 Americans will spend at least a year in prison during their lifetime. The land of the free and the home of the brave has been opening, on average, three new prisons or jails every month for the past quarter century."  http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/07/25/gop_protection_racket.php

A disproportionate number of them are people of color ... U. S. Department of Justice statistics from two years ago:  "At yearend 2004 there were 3,218 black male sentenced prison inmates per 100,000 black males in the United States, compared to 1,220 Hispanic male inmates per 100,000 Hispanic males and 463 white male inmates per 100,000 white males." and "Even more troubling than the absolute number of persons in jail or prison is the extent to which those men and women are African-American. Although blacks account for only 12 percent of the U.S. population, 44 percent of all prisoners in the United States are black.

"Census data for 2000, which included a count of the number and race of all individuals incarcerated in the United States, reveals the dramatic racial disproportion of the incarcerated population in each state: the proportion of blacks in prison populations exceeds the proportion among state residents in every single state. In twenty states, the percent of blacks incarcerated is at least five times greater than their share of resident population."   http://backspace.com/notes/images/us042903.pdf