STATE PRISONS' GROWTH RATE SLOWS

Number Incarcerated in U.S. Stayed at Record High in 2000

The number of Americans in state prisons last year increased at the slowest
rate since 1971, although the number of people incarcerated in the United
States remained at a record high in 2000, the Justice Department reported
yesterday.

As of last June, 1,931,859 people were in federal, state and local
facilities, a 3 percent increase over June 1999. The increase was primarily
in the number in federal prisons, researchers said.

The majority of people behind bars in the United States are in state
prisons. This population grew by 1.5 percent, the smallest annual growth
rate in 29 years, according to a report by the department's Bureau of
Justice Statistics.

Racial disparities in prison populations were profound, the report showed:

• Black males were incarcerated in record numbers; a total of 791,600 were
in prison, a new high. Nearly 1 in 8 black males age 20 to 34 were in
prison on any given day, the report said.

• Racial minorities account for 79 percent of state prison drug offenders.

The number of prisoners in state correctional facilities was 1,242,962 as
of last June. Eleven states reported a decline in inmate populations from
1999 to 2000, including two of the nation's largest state prison systems --
California and New York.

Allen J. Beck, a co-author of the report, said state prison populations
fell because crime is down across the country.

Crime has been falling for several years but, until last year, that did not
slow the rate of growth in the prison population because stricter
sentencing rules were keeping inmates in jail longer.

"The drop in crime is finally starting to show up in a smaller growth rate
in the number of prisoners," Beck said.

Prisoner advocates say the trend is encouraging, but they contend that far
too many people are incarcerated in the United States compared with other
countries.

"We have 25 percent of the world's prisoners, but we're only 5 percent of
the world's population," said Kara Gotsch of the American Civil Liberties
Union's National Prison Project, which advocates alternatives to incarceration.

Gotsch said the slower growth rate at state prisons could represent a trend
toward dealing with offenders outside the prison system.

"Many states are now realizing that it makes not only good criminal justice
sense but also good financial sense to find alternatives," such as sending
drug offenders into treatment programs, Gotsch said. "It's too expensive to
jail everyone."