AFTER LONG CLIMB, PRISON POPULATION FALLS IN NEW YORK

The number of state prisoners in New York is declining for the first time
in 27 years, according to officials of the State Department of Correctional
Services.

While advocates for prisoners' rights say plummeting crime rates have
played a role in the decline, which is expected to continue, officials in
the Pataki administration attributed the trend to new policies that grant
early release to more nonviolent felons.

Whatever the reason, New York is not alone. State corrections officials in
California, Texas and Pennsylvania all report that their prison populations
have remained roughly flat over the last year, after years of steady
increases. "This appears to be more than a blip," said Marc Mauer,
assistant director of the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based research
group that opposes mandatory sentences. "There is a possibility that things
are going to change."

The decline in New York so far is small, with the state's prison population
dropping from 71,750 inmates on Feb. 1, 2000, to 70,283 inmates yesterday,
a decrease of 2 percent. But state corrections officials project that the
prison population will drop to roughly 65,200 in 2002, a 9 percent decrease
over two years.

If Gov. George E. Pataki and legislative leaders agree this year on
overhauling the state's Rockefeller-era drug laws, which require long
sentences for nonviolent drug-related crimes, they say the prison
population could shrink even more. Critics have said that lengthy mandatory
sentences and tight parole had inflated the prison population despite
decreases in crime.

Aides to Mr. Pataki give his policies credit for producing the decline,
which they estimate will save the state $50 million in prison costs next
year. In a process the Pataki administration calls right-sizing, defendants
convicted of violent crimes are receiving longer sentences and being denied
parole. People convicted of nonviolent offenses, meanwhile, are being given
shorter terms and receiving more lenient treatment from the State Parole
Board. "It's what the governor intended to happen," said Jim Flateau, a
spokesman for the corrections department.

Prisoners' rights advocates praised the more lenient treatment of
nonviolent offenders, but argued that crime trends in New York City have
more to do with the drop in the number of felons than the governor's
policies do. "You have more misdemeanors and a decline in felony arrests,"
said Robert Gangi, executive director of the Correctional Association of
New York, a watchdog group. "There is less fodder for the mill that is
going to increase inmates going into the system." People convicted of
misdemeanors are sentenced to less than a year in local jails, while people
convicted of felonies are sentenced to a year or more in state prison.

New York's state prisons have long been chronically overcrowded, with the
number of inmates rising from 13,000 in 1973, when the Rockefeller-era drug
laws were enacted, to more than 70,000 today. Pataki administration
officials credit their initiatives for the change in course.

In 1996, for example, the state opened the Willard drug treatment facility,
where it runs a program for 850 nonviolent drug offenders that combines
counseling and a military boot camp-like setting. Nonviolent felons who
complete Willard's 90-day program are released on parole and avoid spending
a year in prison.

Governor Pataki also expanded traditional boot-camp incarceration programs
created by Gov. Mario M. Cuomo. Nonviolent offenders who complete those
programs become eligible for early parole release. The Pataki
administration also backed a merit-time program that allows nonviolent
offenders who earn a high school diploma or get vocational training in
prison to be considered for early parole.

Katherine N. Lapp, the governor's criminal justice coordinator, said those
three programs had resulted in the early release of nearly 37,000
nonviolent prisoners since 1995. She said that if the nonviolent offenders
had served out their terms, the system would have needed more beds.

Mr. Flateau said the $50 million in savings would come from phasing out
2,423 beds in 14 medium-security prisons where inmates are now
double-bunked. The positions of 600 corrections employees at those 14
prisons would be eliminated through a hiring freeze, voluntary transfers
and attrition, he said. As the population continues to decline, the hiring
freeze could be expanded to other prisons.

While the state is cutting beds in medium-security prisons, it is
increasing its maximum-security capacity. Despite the sharp drop in violent
crime in the state, there has been a 9 percent rise in the number of
violent offenders in prison between 1994 and 2000. Parole officials say
more violent felons are being denied parole by the State Parole Board,
whose members are appointed by the governor. Over the last several years,
the state has built two new maximum-security prisons with 1,500 beds each.
Two thousand maximum-security beds were added to other facilities.

In other states, a variety of factors are driving the slowdown in
population growth. In Texas, which has the country's largest state prison
system, the number of inmates has remained stable for the last five months,
according to Tony Fabelo, executive director of the state's Criminal
Justice Policy Council. Mr. Fabel said an increase in the number of
prisoners granted parole was fueling the trend.

In California, an increase in drug-treatment beds from 400 in 1997 to 8,000
this fiscal year has helped drive down recidivism, according to Russ
Heimerich, a spokesman for the California Department of Corrections. While
other factors may increase the number of inmates, he said, the passage last
fall of Proposition 36, a ballot initiative that requires drug treatment
for nonviolent offenders, may help drive it down.

In Pennsylvania, an increase in the number of halfway houses where
offenders can be paroled is decreasing the prison population. Michael
Lukens, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, said the
agency anticipated an increase of only 234 prisoners per year through 2006.

But in other large states, the prison population is growing. Sergio Molina,
a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Corrections, said that the
number of adult male inmates in the state had stabilized. But an increase
in female and juvenile offenders caused the population to surge from 40,700
in 1998 to 45,275 this year.

In Florida, the prison population continues to grow, from 68,599 in 1999 to
71,233 last year, said Debbie Buchanan, a spokeswoman for the Florida
Department of Corrections. She said laws enacted by the Florida Legislature
in the mid-1990's requiring all defendants to serve at least two-thirds of
their sentences had decreased release rates.

Ms. Lapp said that New York was a national leader. "All the indicators are
going in the right direction," she said. "This governor knew how to keep
violent offenders off the streets and knows how to treat nonviolent offenders."

But Mr. Gangi said Mr. Pataki had been slow to enact many reforms. The
state's maximum-security prisons remain overcrowded and dangerous, he said,
and the State Parole Board is being too restrictive on granting parole to
violent felons. He called Mr. Pataki's recent proposed reforms of the
Rockefeller-era drug laws promising, but said that effort should be expanded.

"The key thing that would have an impact would be revising the sentencing
laws" to give judges more latitude, he said. "If judges get the power back,
they would divert thousands of people into programs instead of prison."