What percentage of prisoners in the united states is in prison for drug related activities?

(a) 10%
(b) 25%
(c) 50%
(d) 90%

In federal prisons in 2008, 52.1% (95,079 of 182,333 prisoners) were there for drug-related crimes. In state prisons, this number is 20.0% (265,800 of 1,331,100 prisoners).

Dividing the total number of drug prisoners by the total number of prisoners yields 23.8%.

In case you're interested, the data for state prisons was additionally broken down by gender and race:
- Male: 19.4%
- Female: 27.4%
- White: 15.2%
- Black: 23.1%
- Hispanic: 22.4%

It's also interesting to note that 12.0% of all prisoners are in federal prisons, and 88.0% are in state prisons.