NUMBER OF STATE PRISON INMATES DROPS

Last Year's Modest Decline First Since 1972; California Prisons See Very
Slight Rise

The number of inmates in state prisons fell in the second half of last
year, the first decline since the U.S. prison boom began in 1972, according
to a Justice Department report released Sunday.

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 comes after the number of state prisoners rose 500 percent over the last
three decades, growing each year in the 1990s even 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. "It is really the
first change in direction in 30 years in the march toward incarceration."

In California, the number of state prison inmates was up just 66 inmates,
from 163,001 to 163,067.

Contributing Factors

Experts attributed the nationwide 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 law professor at the University of
California-Berkeley.

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 decline was
not 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 1990s and is 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 in federal prisons.

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 increase of prisoners has been slowing for several years and has
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,
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, Beck said.

Budget Benefits

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, Beck said. In addition, the annual operating costs
for state and federal prisons now run about $30 billion, Beck said.