[News] Despite Drop in Crime, an Increase in Inmates

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Despite Drop in Crime, an Increase in Inmates

November 8, 2004
By FOX BUTTERFIELD





The number of inmates in state and federal prisons rose 2.1
percent last year, even as violent crime and property crime
fell, according to a study by the Justice Department
released yesterday.

The continuing increase in the prison population, despite a
drop or leveling off in the crime rate in the past few
years, is a result of laws passed in the 1990's that led to
more prison sentences and longer terms, said Allen J. Beck,
chief of corrections statistics for the department's Bureau
of Justice Statistics and an author of the report.

At the end of 2003, there were 1,470,045 men and women in
state and federal prisons in the United States, the report
found. In addition, counting those inmates in city and
county jails and incarcerated juvenile offenders, the total
number of Americans behind bars was 2,212,475 on Dec. 31
last year, the report said.

The report estimated that 44 percent of state and federal
prisoners in 2003 were black, compared with 35 percent who
were white, 19 percent who were Hispanic and 2 percent who
were of other races. The numbers have changed little in the
last decade.

Statistically, the number of women in prison is growing
fast, rising 3.6 percent in 2003. But at a total of
101,179, they are just 6.9 percent of the prison
population.

Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon
University, said one of the most striking findings in the
report was that almost 10 percent of all American black men
ages 25 to 29 were in prison.

Such a high proportion of young black men behind bars not
only has a strong impact on black families, Professor
Blumstein said, but "in many ways is self-defeating." The
criminal justice system is built on deterrence, with being
sent to prison supposedly a stigma, he said. "But it's
tough to convey a sense of stigma when so many of your
friends and neighbors are similarly stigmatized."

In seeking to explain the paradox of a falling crime rate
but a rising prison population, Mr. Beck pointed out that
F.B.I. statistics showed that from 1994 to 2003 there was a
16 percent drop in arrests for violent crime, including a
36 percent decrease in arrests for murder and a 25 percent
decrease in arrests for robbery.

But the tough new sentencing laws led to a growth in
inmates being sent to prison, from 522,000 in 1995 to
615,400 in 2002, the report said.

Similarly, the report found that the average time served by
prison inmates rose from 23 months in 1995 to 30 months in
2001.

Among the new measures were mandatory minimum sentencing
laws, which required inmates to serve a specified
proportion of their time behind bars; truth-in-sentencing
laws, which required an inmate to actually serve the time
he was sentenced to; and a variety of three-strikes laws
increasing the penalties for repeat offenders.

In the three states with the biggest prison systems,
California, Texas and Florida, the number of newly admitted
inmates grew last year, but the number of those released
either fell or remained stable, Mr. Beck said.

Several states with small prison systems had particularly
large increases in new inmates, led by North Dakota, up
11.4 percent, and Minnesota, up 10.3 percent.

New York had a 2.8 percent decrease in new inmates,
reflecting the continued sharp fall in crime in New York
City, Mr. Beck said.

Over all, Mr. Beck said, the prison population is aging.
Traditionally the great majority of inmates are men in
their 20's and early 30's, but middle-aged inmates, those
40 to 54, account for about half of the increase in the
prison population since 1995, he said.

This is a result both of the aging of the general American
population and of the longer sentences, Mr. Beck said.

But the number of elderly inmates is still small, despite
longer sentences and more life sentences. Those inmates 65
and older were still only 1 percent of the prison
population in 2003.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/national/08prisons.html?ex=1100930814&ei=1&en=24004a878c5dcafa




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