STATES FACE GROWING PRISON POPULATION

WASHINGTON (AP) -- America's prison population grew again in 2002 despite a
declining crime rate, costing the federal government and states an estimated
$40 billion a year at a time of rampant budget shortfalls.

The inmate population in 2002 of more than 2.1 million represented a 2.6
percent increase over 2001, according to a report released Sunday by the
Bureau of Justice Statistics. Preliminary FBI statistics showed a 0.2
percent drop in overall crime during the same span.

Experts say mandatory sentences, especially for nonviolent drug offenders,
are a major reason inmate populations have risen for 30 years. About one of
every 143 U.S. residents was in the federal, state or local custody at
year's end.

"The nation needs to break the chains of our addiction to prison, and find
less costly and more effective policies like treatment," said Will Harrell,
executive director of the Texas American Civil Liberties Union. "We need to
break the cycle."

Others say tough sentencing laws, such as the "three strikes" laws that can
put repeat offenders behind bars for life, are a chief reason for the drop
in crime. The Justice Department, for example, this year ordered Bureau of
Prisons officials to stop sending so many white-collar and nonviolent
criminals to halfway houses.

"The prospect of prison, more than any other sanction, is feared by
white-collar criminals and has a powerful deterrent effect," Deputy Attorney
General Larry Thompson said in a memo announcing the change.

Another important finding in the report was that 10.4 percent of all black
men between 25 and 29 were incarcerated last year, compared with 1.2 percent
of white men and 2.4 percent of Hispanic men.

The report found that this large racial disparity had not increased in the
past decade. But Marc Mauer, the assistant director of The Sentencing
Project, a prison-reform research and advocacy group, said that the number
of young black men in prison remaining so high, "the ripple effect on their
communities, and on the next generation of kids growing up with their
fathers in prison, will certainly be with us for at least a generation."

The cost of housing, feeding and caring for a prison inmate is roughly
$20,000 per year, or about $40 billion nationwide using 2002 figures,
according to The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit organization that promotes
alternatives to prison. Construction costs are about $100,000 per cell.

Drug offenders now make up more than half of all federal prisoners. The
federal penal system, which has tough sentencing policies for drug offenses,
is now the nation's largest at more than 151,600 - an increase of 4.2
percent compared with 2001.

Over the same period, state prison and jail populations grew just 2.4
percent. Prison alternative advocates credit moves in some states to divert
drug offenders to treatment programs and other innovations for that lower
growth rate.

Texas, for example, recently passed a drug treatment alternative law and saw
its prison population remain virtually unchanged from 2001 to 2002. "The way
to reduce prison spending is to reduce the number of people in prison and
the number of prisons, like some states across the country have done," said
Rose Braz, director of Critical Resistance, a California-based group opposed
to prison expansion.

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At the same time, the Justice Department report found that 17 states
reported increases of at least 5 percent year-to-year in their prison
populations, with Maine's increasing by 11.5 percent and Rhode Island's
rising 8.6 percent. The federal prisons and almost all state corrections
systems are over their capacities, with 71,000 offenders serving their state
or federal sentences in local jails.

Other key points in the report:

- -As of last Dec. 31, there were 97,491 women in state or federal prisons, or
about 6.8 percent of all inmates and one in every 1,656 women. There were
over 1.3 million male inmates, or about one in 110 men.

- -Overall, the 586,700 black men in prison outnumbered both the 436,800 white
males and 235,000 Hispanic males. Black males account for about 45 percent
of all inmates serving a sentence longer than a year.

- -Privately operated prisons held 93,771 inmates, about 5.8 percent of state
prisoners and 12.4 percent of those in federal jurisdictions.

- -At year's end 2002, the federal government held 8,748 people at immigration
detention facilities, 2,377 at military jails and 16,206 in U.S. territorial
prisons.