PRISON POPULATION RISES AT SLOWER RATE

WASHINGTON -- The number of Americans in state prisons last year increased
at the slowest rate since 1971, though the total 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 of people in federal prisons, researchers said. The number of
people in California prisons was 164,490, but that number does not include
local jails.

The majority of people behind bars in the United States are in state
prisons, and 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. Nearly one in eight black males age 20 to 34 were in prison on
any given day, the report said.

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

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

Prisoner advocates say the trend is encouraging but contend far too many
people are incarcerated in the United States.

"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.