GROWTH RATE IN STATE PRISONS DECLINES

From Our Staff and Wire Services

The population of state prisons dropped for the first time in nearly
three decades during the second half of 2000, and criminologists say
it may foretell a new trend.

The downturn, reported Sunday by the Justice Department, came even
though over the course of the entire year, the number of state
inmates grew, to 1,236,476 from 1,228,455, and the combined
population of state and federal prisons edged up 1.3 percent from
1999.

That contrasted, however, with the average annual growth rate of 6
percent since 1990 and was the lowest percentage gain since 1972. The
absolute increase of inmates - 8,021 in state prisons and 10,170 in
federal prisons - also was the smallest since 1980.

Although the rate of increase in Missouri prisons has slowed in
recent years, officials are still seeing a growth rate of more than
2.5 prisoners per day.

The increase of 2.58 prisoners per day Missouri prisons saw last year
is still well above the average increase of 1.5 inmates Missouri
prisons saw before 1994, said Tim Kniest, Missouri Department of
Corrections spokesman.

"It's still growing, it's just growing at a slower rate."

Criminologists said the slowing growth of prison populations, coupled
with the decline of 6,243 in the last six months of the year in state
prisons, could signal the end of America's prison boom.

"Until now, the full-time business of prisons has been the growth of
the prison population," said Franklin E. Zimring, a criminal law
professor at the University of California at Berkeley. "Finally, this
looks like real stabilization. If it continues, it is a new era in
law enforcement."

Karl Kunkel, associate professor of sociology at Southwest Missouri
State University, said he would like to be optimistic that the
numbers may signify a new trend, but said it would take more than a
single year's statistics to know for sure.

"We still have a lot of people behind bars and a (national) increase
of 1.3 percent is still an increase," Kunkel said.

Missouri prison officials' main focus right now, said Kniest, is
reducing current overcrowding problems and finding ways to
accommodate the influx of new prisoners.

Two new prisons - one in Charleston and one in Bonne Terre - should
increase the capacity of Missouri prisons by more than 4,000 beds.

"That will help us reduce overcrowding in our current facilities,"
Kniest said, "but it doesn't completely solve the problem."

The decline comes after a few years of slowing growth at state
prisons. During the first six months of last year, the state prison
population grew by 14,264 inmates.

During all of last year, 13 states had substantial decreases in their
state and federal inmate populations, including Massachusetts (down
5.6 percent), New Jersey (down 5.4 percent), New York (down 3.7
percent) and Texas (down 3.2 percent).

Allen J. Beck, a chief researcher with the Bureau of Justice
Statistics in the Justice Department, said some of the declines may
have been caused by states easing rules for parolees.

"In New Jersey and Ohio, they are less likely to revoke parole than
in prior years. New York has also become more lenient," he said.

Dan Macallair, vice president of the San Francisco-based Justice
Policy Institute, said attitudes about drug use contributed to the
decline. Communities and judges are getting tired of repeatedly
sending drug offenders to prison and are looking for alternatives, he
suggested.

Racial disparities in prisons held steady, the report said.

About 10 percent of all black men between ages 25 and 29 were held in
federal or state prisons, compared with 2.9 percent of Hispanic men
and 1.1 percent of white men in the same age group.