WASHINGTON (AP) -- The number of adults behind bars, on parole or on
probation reached a record 6.47 million in 2000 -- or one in 32 American
adults, the government reported Sunday.

On the positive side, the percentage increase from 1999 was half the
average annual rate since 1990.

Jails and prisons held 30 percent of the adults in the corrections system,
or 1,933,503. People on probation accounted for 59 percent of the total, or
3,839,532 million. An additional 725,527 adults were on parole, a period of
supervision following release from prison.

Over the past two decades, the number of adults in the corrections system
has tripled, so they now make up 3.1 of the country's adult population,
compared with 1 percent in 1980, said Allen J. Beck, a chief researcher
with the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics. "It's just
overwhelming," said Kara Gotsch, a spokeswoman for the American Civil
Liberties Union's National Prison Project, which advocates alternatives to
incarceration. "It just shows that we need to put much more into prevention."

During the 1990s, the corrections population increased 49 percent. By the
end of last year, there were 2.1 million more adults in the system than
there were in 1990.

The rate of growth was 2 percent between 1999 and 2000, compared with an
average of 4 percent during the 1990s. Beck attributed the slowing growth
to the cumulative effect of a general drop in crime rates that began in the
1990s. "This could be the beginning of a peak," said James Alan Fox, a
criminal justice professor at Northeastern University in Boston. Nearly 2.5
million people were released from parole or probation in 2000. Among
parolees, half successfully completed the terms of their release in 1990.
By 2000, just 43 percent completed parole and stayed out through the end of
the year.

Among those released from community supervision in 2000, 15 percent of
probationers and 42 percent of parolees were sent back to prison or jail
that year for new violations. Fox said that figure underestimates the large
number who will probably be convicted again.

Beck noted that the number of Americans who have returned to prison has
remained stable over time.

To Gotsch, that shows the shortsightedness of corrections policies that
focus more on punishment and less on rehabilitation. "It's no wonder that
they're re-offending at incredibly high rates because we don't teach them
anything else," she said.

The report also showed:

* Among those on probation, 52 percent were convicted of felonies, the most
frequent of which was driving under the influence, followed by drug offenses.

* The percentage of women in the prison population, as well as their
percentages among probationers and parolees, rose.

* The states with the largest percentage of their adult population in the
corrections system were Georgia, 6.8 percent, and Texas, 5 percent. At the
other end were West Virginia, New Hampshire and North Dakota, each with 0.9
percent.