NUMBER OF PEOPLE IN STATE PRISONS DECLINES SLIGHTLY

The number of inmates in state prisons fell in the second half of last year,
the first such decline since the nation's prison boom began in 1972, says a
Justice Department report released yesterday. The decline was modest, a drop
of 6,200 inmates in state prisons in the last six months of 2000, or 0.5
percent of the total, the report said. But it came after the number of state
prisoners rose 500 percent over the last three decades, even growing each
year in the 1990's as crime dropped.

The total number of people incarcerated in state and federal prisons, local
jails and juvenile detention centers was 2,071,686 at the end of 2000, the
report said. "I think it is a very significant development," said Alfred
Blumstein, a professor of criminology at Carnegie Mellon University and one
of the nation's most respected experts on prisons. "It is really the first
change in direction in 30 years in the march towards incarceration." Experts
attributed the drop to several factors: the continuing decline in crime,
which began in 1992; new attitudes about offering drug offenders treatment
instead of locking them up; and a greater willingness by parole officers to
help parolees instead of sending them back to prison for minor infractions.
"If this trend continues, it could be a real change in the most important
vector that has been driving the American criminal justice system for 30
years," said Franklin Zimring, a professor of law at the University of
California at Berkeley. It has been the explosive growth of prisons, more
than efforts by the police, or changes in the law or tougher sentences by
judges that has been "the most dominant characteristic of the American
criminal justice system" in the last three decades, Professor Zimring said.
In 1972, he noted, after 50 years of stability in the incarceration rate,
200,000 Americans were in state and federal prisons.

Now 1.3 million are. Law enforcement officials and criminologists cautioned
that the drop in the second half of 2000 was not long enough to make a
trend.

In fact, for all of 2000, counting state and federal prisons, the number of
inmates actually grew 1.3 percent, the report said. But that is well below
the average growth rate of 6 percent in the 1990's and the lowest rate of
increase since 1972, the report said. At the end of 2000, there were
1,236,476 people in state prisons and 145,416 federal prisoners. What seems
to be happening, said Allen J. Beck, the main author of the report, which
was released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, is that the rate of growth
in prisoners has been slowing for several years and has now reached a point
where it is stable.

It is too early to tell whether the slowdown will continue and lead to a
real decline in the number of inmates, Mr. Beck said. He said he did not yet
believe the number would drop substantially. Thirteen states experienced a
decline in their number of prisoners for the full year, he said, led by
Massachusetts, with a drop of 5.6 percent, New Jersey, down 5.4 percent, New
York, down 3.7 percent, and Texas, down 3.2 percent.

In each of these states, short-term factors accounted for the declines, like
a drop in arrests or more lenient parole policies, Mr. Beck said. But if the
decline continues, it could benefit state budgets because prisons have been
the fastest growing item of state spending over the last 20 years. In a
number of states, including California, spending on prisons has depleted
money for state colleges and universities. In the last decade, states built
prisons with 528,000 new beds, the report found. At an average cost of
$50,000 per bed, building prisons cost the states $26.4 billion, Mr. Beck
said. In addition, the annual operating costs for state and federal prisons
now run about $30 billion, Mr. Beck said. But a decline in the number of
inmates could be bad news for private prison companies, whose stock prices
depend on a steadily growing number of inmates, and for some prison guards
unions, like the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. The
association has been the biggest contributor to a number of California
politicians and the most powerful force in the state pushing for tougher
sentencing laws, like California's "three strikes and you're out" statute.
John Ferguson, the president and chief executive office of the Corrections
Corporation of America, the largest for-profit prison company, said he had
seen some "softness in demand" in Texas, or a decrease in the number of
inmates. But Mr. Ferguson predicted that in the long term the private prison
business would continue to flourish because the federal prison system was
projected to continue to grow. In addition, he said, some states like
Alabama, which are keeping state prisoners in local jails, will have to move
them to regular prisons, and some states with very old prisons will find it
cheaper to replace them with privately run prisons. The report also said
that among the 1.3 million people in state and federal prisons there were
428,000 black men 20 through 29 years old, or 9.7 percent of the total black
men in that age group.

That compares with 2.9 percent of Hispanic men and 1.1 percent of
non-Hispanic white men in that age group who were in prison. The report said
there were 44,000 whites in prison for murder, compared with 70,700 blacks,
and 50,700 whites in prison for drug offenses, compared with 144,700 blacks;
there are 33,800 whites in prison for robbery compared with 97,300 blacks.

Blacks make up 12 percent of the United States population. The racial
disparities are more pronounced than they appear in these figures, Professor
Blumstein said. The even greater over-representation of blacks in prison
than the number being arrested for drug crimes is partly a result of the
tougher sentences for crack cocaine than for powdered cocaine, Professor
Blumstein said. Crack is more commonly dealt by blacks, and powdered cocaine
is more commonly dealt by whites. But the discrepancies also reflect
differences in prior arrest records and some level of racism, he said. The
three states with the highest incarceration rates, the report found, were
Louisiana, with 801 prisoners per 100,000 residents; Texas, with 730 inmates
per 100,000; and Mississippi, with 688 inmates per 100,000. The states with
the lowest incarceration rates were Minnesota, with 128 inmates per 100,000
residents; Maine, with 129 inmates per 100,000; and North Dakota, with 158
inmates per 100,000.