According to the report, one in every three black males face prison in their lifetime. The study found that black men had a 32.2 percent chance of going to prison in 2001, compared to 5.9 percent among white males and 17.2 percent among Hispanic men.

In addition, black females had a 5.6 percent chance of going to prison in 2001.

Some experts who have reviewed the report say the reason is that black men are under greater scrutiny by police, particularly for drug crimes.

"The police tactics tend to be more focused on neighborhoods where you are more likely to arrest an African-American man for a low-level drug offense than if we were to concentrate those resources in a suburb," said Jason Ziedenerg, assistant director for policy and research at the Justice Policy Institute, a group that favors alternatives to prison.

"Whites and African Americans use drugs at pretty much the same rate," Ziedenberg added. "We enforce the drug laws more in urban communities, and then we arrest people, and then we convict people, and then they end up in prison."

Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project, which promotes addiction treatment programs rather than imprisonment, said blacks released from jail also find it harder to get on with their lives.

"Since the 1970s, there has been a considerable opening of social and economic opportunity in much of the black community," he said. "But I think we're seeing that for those people kind of left behind by those advances -- and that's largely in urban centers -- in many ways, their life prospects are probably getting considerably worse."

Experts offer several recommendations, among them reforms in the judicial system, greater focus on drug-treatment programs, and more emphasis on personal responsibility.

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