SOARING U.S. INMATE POPULATION SPARKS DEBATE

America put more people behind bars in the 1990s than in any decade in its
history, sparking a debate over racial fairness and the wisdom of spending
billions of dollars to keep nearly 2 million people locked up. The United
States ends 1999 with an estimated 1,983,084 men and women in federal and
state prisons and local jails, according to the Justice Policy Institute, a
research group critical of U.S. incarceration policy.

That represents an increase of nearly 840,000 inmates during the 1990s and
makes the United States the country with the highest official inmate
population in the world. With the cost of housing an inmate at about
$20,000 a year, the price tag in 1999 for keeping all these prisoners
behind bars is about $39 billion, the institute said.

Some experts argue that this is money well spent, saying the cost of
keeping prisoners behind bars pales in comparison to the cost to society of
crime. They also point out that the rise in the inmate population in the
1990s coincided with a steady drop in U.S. crime rates. The FBI has
reported that serious crime has declined for seven years in a row.

``One of the principal reasons for punishment is deterrence -- the message
that it sends,'' said Florida Republican Bill McCollum, chairman of the
House of Representatives crime subcommittee. ``There are a substantial
number of people who don't commit crimes every day because they don't want
to go to prison.''

But critics note the get-tough prosecution and sentencing policies that
spawned the rising prison population have affected blacks
disproportionately. They argue that the money spent to house inmates --
particularly nonviolent offenders and some drug offenders -- could be
better used on alternatives to prison and substance abuse treatment and
education programs.

``Even for those who suggest that imprisonment is responsible for the drop
in crime -- and I think it's very questionable -- if current policies
result in three out of 10 black males born today expecting to be in prison
at some point in their lifetime, that seems to me to be a rather depressing
way to go about crime control,'' said Marc Mauer, an expert on
incarceration trends at the Sentencing Project research group. Half Of U.S.
Inmates Are Black:

While blacks are about 13 percent of the U.S. population, they make up
about half of the state and federal prison population. Blacks were at least
six times more likely than whites to be serving time in state or federal
prisons, the Justice Department said, adding that nearly 9 percent of all
black men between 25 and 29 were in prison, compared to 0.9 percent of all
white men in the same age group.

In addition, nearly one in three black men in their 20s is under some type
of correctional control -- probation, parole or incarceration -- compared
to one in 15 white men.

Mauer said socioeconomic factors, not just racial bias, help explain the
disproportionate impact on blacks. Blacks have a higher rate of committing
some offences because they are more likely to live in crime-plagued poor
urban areas, he said.

He also said blacks are more likely than whites to be sentenced to prison
for drug offences, which have accounted for a large share of the inmate
population explosion of the 1990s. The Justice Department said there are
about three times as many blacks serving time for drug offences as whites.

``Much of this has to do with law enforcement priorities that inner-city
neighborhoods are more heavily policed and have more drug enforcement
activity going on,'' Mauer said. He added that in middle-class areas, which
are more likely to be populated by whites, drug problems are viewed as
something that should be addressed through treatment, not through prison.

``People Started To Wake Up''

Edwin Meese, U.S. attorney general under President Ronald Reagan, said
there was a feeling among some policymakers in the early 1970s that the
criminal justice system had become too easy on criminals. He said a
California advisory panel he chaired in 1971, when Reagan was governor,
found that less than 10 percent of convicted felons actually were sent to
prison and those who were served only a fraction of their sentence.

``People started to wake up that this was not a very good way to do
things,'' added Meese, now a fellow at the Heritage Foundation and Hoover
Institution public policy think tanks.

State legislatures in the mid-1970s began adopting ''mandatory minimum''
sentences, meaning that criminals would serve at least a minimum period in
prison for various offences. Later they added
``three-strikes-and-you're-out'' laws cracking down on repeat offenders.
``As a result of this, we have had a tremendous decrease in crime,'' Meese
said.

McCollum said the tougher sentencing policies closed the ''revolving door''
through which criminals would enter and exit the criminal justice system
only to commit more crimes. ``You can't just let these people who committed
major crimes walk free,'' he added.

U.S. Leads The World:

A British government report found that the U.S. inmate population was the
world's largest, followed by China and Russia. The report said America,
with 5 percent of the world's population, had nearly a quarter of all
prisoners.

The Sentencing Project said the U.S. rate of incarceration

- -- 672 out of every 100,000 people -- ranked second in the world, trailing
only Russia. Belarus was third, Ukraine fourth and Singapore fifth, the
group said.

But some experts said reliable statistics were not available from many
nations, including China and other countries criticized for their records
on human rights.

``We're off the charts compared to other Western nations,'' said Justice
Policy Institute Director Vincent Schiraldi.

After 50 years of stability, the U.S. incarceration rate began increasing
in the early 1970s. Since then, it has grown at an average of about 6
percent annually, although it grew by just 4.8 percent in 1998, the
smallest increase since 1979.

Alfred Blumstein, a professor of public policy at Carnegie Mellon
University in Pittsburgh, said there was no doubt rising incarceration
rates have contributed to the drop in crime.

But he added: ``We do far more incarceration than is necessary for crime
prevention purposes.'' He advocated returning more discretion to judges and
parole officials to allow them to ``size up the individual and his risk
potential.''

In 1980, there were about 501,000 inmates in state and federal prisons,
which hold convicted criminals, and local jails, which hold defendants
awaiting trial and convicted criminals serving shorter sentences. This
inmate population zoomed past the 1-million mark in 1989 and, according to
the Justice Policy Institute, will reach 2 million on Feb. 15.

No decade even comes close to matching the 1990s in terms of the numbers of
Americans incarcerated. Among U.S. states, Louisiana has the highest
incarceration rate, followed by Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi and South
Carolina. The lowest rate is recorded by Minnesota, followed by Maine,
North Dakota, New Hampshire and Vermont.