PRISON POPULATION 1.8 MILLION, RISING

Officials Disagree On Causes And Effects

If you know 150 people, chances are at least one is doing time in
prison, according to a new government report.

More than 1.8 million people -- or one out of every 150 U.S. residents
- -- were in state and federal prisons or local jails in the middle of
1998, according the U.S. Department of Justice report.

In other words, there are more people in jail now than there are
residents of San Diego.

The prison population is more than twice what it was in 1985 and the
largest in the nation's history. And it's still growing.

There are a lot of reasons for that growth, said statistician Darrell
Gilliard, who wrote the report. But with 52 jurisdictions reflected in
the final numbers, it's hard to nail down why the numbers continue to
climb.

Yet, others were eager to share their theories on the causes and
effects of the nation's booming prison population.

One is Jenni Gainsborough, a spokeswoman for the Campaign for an
Effective Crime Policy in Washington, D.C., which is critical of the
way the nation now handles criminals.

"The main reasons why we have this huge imprisoned population at the
moment really is sentencing length," Gainsborough said. "We're not
only locking up more people, but we're locking them up for a longer
and longer period of time."

The problem is particularly evident in California, Gainsborough said.
The report found there are more prisoners in California's state and
federal prisons than in any other jurisdiction -- 158,742.

Gainsborough, said California should consider repealing or modifying
its "Three Strikes, You're Out" law. A proposal to modify the law by
requiring a third strike to be a felony is already before the state
Senate.

"I think that would be a huge step forward to do that," she said.
"You've reached the frightening situation, if you lock too many people
up, that going to prison instead of being a shocking event just become
part of the growing-up experience."

Morgan Reynolds, director of the National Center for Policy Analysis
in Texas, takes the opposite view, Reynolds said get-tough laws and
increased jail time have reduced crime by taking criminals off the
streets and making potential or repeat offenders think twice before
committing more crimes.

But Gainborough and Reynolds do see eye-to-eye on at least one issue:
how best to reduce the national inmate population. "One of the things
that's clearly going on is more hardliners on crime are saying, 'maybe
this war on drugs needs to be re-examined,'" Reynolds said. "If we
could free up some of the bed space that would be released from drug
offender use, we could use that for the predatory crime
convictees."

That proposal won hearty support for Gainsborough, who also likes
Reynolds' suggested replacement for the war on drugs: a policy
allowing state and local governments to design their own treatment
programs.

"Ever the people who have made the argument that locking up a lot of
people is making the crime rate go down ... have said we've now gone
as far as we can with this," she said.

"With drugs, what we need to be focused on is treatment and prevention
and nut just incarceration."