BUSH SEEKS $4.66 BILLION TO COPE WITH FEDERAL PRISON POPULATION

WASHINGTON -- Fueled by tough mandatory sentences for drug crimes, the
federal prison population will soon soar nearly a third, even as the
population explosion in state prisons levels off.

To cope with the projected influx of new inmates, the Bush administration
is asking Congress for $4.66 billion next year for the federal Bureau of
Prisons, an increase of 8.3% from current spending. If approved, that
figure would be double Mr. Bush's overall rate of increase for federal
programs. The prison bureau's account is now the largest item -- 18.9% --
in the Justice Department's budget, nearly surpassing the combined budgets
of the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

At a time when state prison population growth has slowed to a 29-year low,
Bureau of Prisons researchers estimate their agency will be holding 198,000
people by the 2006 budget year, 31.8% over the current population of 150,152.

The bureau bases its projection partly on growth of its prison population
in recent years, as well as expected growth of the overall U.S. population.
Also figured in is the transfer of more than 5,000 inmates to federal
institutions from the District of Columbia's prison complex, which is
closing by the end of this year.

But the biggest factor is the rising number of federal prisoners
incarcerated on drug charges, many of them serving long, mandatory
sentences -- and many once the province of the state system. Those crimes
now account for 58% of all the people behind bars in the federal system, up
from 41.8% in 1987 when mandatory minimum sentencing was just coming into
existence. Inmates convicted of white-collar crimes, once the largest share
of the population, now make up only about 1%.

Indeed, more than 78,000 people were sentenced to federal prison on drug
charges between 1996 and 1999, the last year for which complete statistics
are available, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Of those,
almost 50,000 were sentenced under mandatory minimum laws, with more than
half of those receiving 10-year mandatory sentences. In each year, the
number of people sentenced on drug offenses increased, as did the number of
people imprisoned for lengthier sentences.

To meet the growing space needs in the federal prison system, 30 new
detention facilities are now either in the planning stages or under
construction. Mr. Bush's 2002 budget requests $740 million to open two new
federal prisons, construct seven more and begin site preparation on four
others.

These developments could fuel a national debate about the wisdom of tough
mandatory minimum sentencing laws, especially for drug crimes. Julie
Stewart, founder of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, an inmate advocacy
group, says the projections are discouraging because they counter what she
believes are changing public attitudes on lengthy jail terms for nonviolent
offenders.

"Politically, there is a momentum for reforming some of the sentencing
laws, but it sounds like a disconnect from what BOP is projecting," she
says. "There also seems to be a disconnect between what the Bureau of
Prisons sees in the future and what is happening at the state level."

The projected swelling of federal prison populations does stand in stark
contrast to forecasts for state prison systems, which altogether now house
nine times as many inmates as the federal system. In a report released last
month by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the federal prison population
rose 11.4% from June 1999 to June 2000. By comparison, the population
growth at the state prison level was 2.4% at a total of 1.18 million, the
lowest growth since 1971.

Alan Beck, who helped write the BJS report, says the slowing trend at the
state level is due to the release of the first wave of inmates who went to
prison under tougher truth-in-sentencing laws in the 1980s and early '90s.
At the same time, state prison population growth is declining along with
the falling crime rate.

"Barring additional [sentencing] reforms" at the state level, Dr. Beck
says, prison population growth there will continue to grow only slowly.

The dynamics at the federal level are different. Before mandatory minimums,
the federal system was primarily "white-collar offenses," says James
Turpin, legislative liaison for the American Correctional Association, a
professional group representing corrections and criminal justice officials.
But since sentencing guidelines and mandatory minimums were put in place, a
number of crimes that were once the purview of state prosecutors have now
become federal crimes.

The increased number of federal crimes has combined with lengthier
sentences and the effective abolition of parole in the federal system to
create a place where "people check in but they don't check out," says Jack
Levin, director of the Brudnick Center on Violence at Boston's Northeastern
University. "At the state level we're seeing drug offenders, property
offenders and inmates who have committed low-level violent crimes coming
out of state penitentiaries in large numbers. That same phenomena is not
happening at the federal level."