INMATE TOTAL NEARS 2 MILLION

WASHINGTON -- On Jan. 1, 1900, there were 57,070 people locked up in local,
state, and federal jails and prisons in the United States. That was 122
inmates for every 100,000 Americans.

As of midnight Friday, a new study says, there will be 1,982,084 adults in
US jails and prisons.

That is 725 inmates for every 100,000 Americans. Before the year 2000 is
two months old, America's prison population will reach 2 million - probably
hitting that level on Feb. 15, the study predicts. By the end of 2000, if
current rates continue, it said, the nation's prison population will reach
2,073,969.

''Our incarceration binge is America's real Y2K problem,'' said Jason
Ziedenberg, coauthor of the study published this month by the
Washington-based Justice Policy Institute. ''As we approach 2 million
prisoners in 2000, we have to find alternatives to incarceration to solve
America's social problems.'' The cost of housing inmates will soon exceed
$40 billion a year, the study found, and state governments invariably are
spending more on prisons and jails than on colleges and universities.

''As we enter the new millennium, the ascendance of prisons as our decade's
major public works project and social program is a sad legacy,'' said
Vincent Schiraldi, director of the institute, in the report titled ''The
Punishing Decade: Prison and Jail Estimates at the Millennium.'' The
institute describes itself as ''a policy development and research body,
which promotes effective and sensible approaches to America's justice
system.'' Others in the criminal justice field generally view it as a
liberal think tank supported largely by liberal foundations. The
institute's research is based largely on nonpolitical statistics from
government records dating back 100 years.

When crunched in today's computers, the rows and columns of numbers become
charts and graphs depicting the results of new laws generated by
politicians throughout the country. The get-tough laws include mandatory
minimum prison sentences for a range of crimes, especially those involving
drugs and guns. By prescribing a fixed minimum jail time to be imposed upon
conviction of a crime - such as 15 years in prison for selling 2 ounces of
cocaine - the laws prohibit judges from considering extenuating
circumstances.

The laws have been extended to such offenses as possession of marijuana
plants and have brought the imprisonment of an inordinate number of
first-time, nonviolent offenders, according to judges and others who decry
the trend. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, whose record in a
quarter-century on the Supreme Court is anything but soft on crime, has
been among the critics. ''These mandatory minimums impose unduly harsh
punishment for first-time offenders and have led to an inordinate increase
in the prison population,'' he told Congress this year.

Others on the highest court also have spoken out. ''Judges should not have
their sentencing discretion controlled,'' said Justice Anthony Kennedy. New
York generally gets credit, or blame, for starting the trend toward harsher
sentences for drug crimes.

In 1973, Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller won enactment of laws mandating
years of jail time for possession of small quantities of drugs and up to
life imprisonment for trafficking. In the 1980s, other states enacted
drug-sentencing laws modeled on the Rockefeller laws. In 1986, Congress
federalized the Rockefeller-style drug laws, enacting statutes that allow
drug crimes to be prosecuted in federal as well as state courts, and
mandating long prison sentences. But researchers say any correlation
between incarceration and crime rates remains elusive.

Contrasting New York and California, the study found that between 1992 and
1997, New York state's murder rate fell 54.5 percent while its prison
population grew by 30 inmates a week. At the same time, California was
adding 270 inmates each week but its murder rate fell by 28 percent