DOUBLING OF PRISON POPULATION HAS U.S. ON TRACK TO BE LEADING JAILER

WASHINGTON -- The number of American adults imprisoned has more than doubled
over the past 12 years, reaching its highest level ever last year, the
Justice Department said Sunday. The United States soon may surpass Russia as
the country with the highest rate of incarceration.

At mid-1998, jails and prisons held an estimated 1.8 million people,
according to a Bureau of Justice Statistics report. At the end of 1985, the
figure was 744,208.

Viewed another way, there were 668 inmates for every 100,000 U.S. residents
as of June 1998, compared with 313 inmates per 100,000 people in 1985.

In Russia, 685 people out of every 100,000 are behind bars, according to The
Sentencing Project, a U.S. group critical of the general trend toward
tougher sentencing of American criminals.

A planned amnesty of 100,000 prisoners in Russia and the expectation of
continued increases in the U.S. inmate population means the United States
probably will become the world's leading jailer "in a year or two," said
Jenni Gainsborough, a Sentencing Project spokeswoman.

The number of people imprisoned in the United States has grown for more than
a quarter-century, helped by increased drug prosecutions and a general
get-tough policy on all classes of offenders.

More criminals serving longer sentences led the inmate population to top 1
million in 1990; it has continued to rise.

About two-thirds of the nation's inmates are in state and federal prisons;
the remaining one-third are in local jails.

Prisons generally hold convicted criminals sentenced to terms longer than 1
year, while jails typically keep those awaiting trial and those sentenced to
12 months or less.

In the June 1998 Justice Department survey, 1.2 million people were held in
prisons, while local jails held about 600,000 men and women. Local jails
also supervised more than 72,000 people under various outside work,
treatment or home detention programs.

The survey showed the total number of people behind bars grew by 4.4 percent
from June 1997.

Between the end of 1990 and mid-1998, the incarcerated population grew an
average 6.2 percent annually, said the report's author, statistician Darrell
Gilliard.

Although the total growth rate was slower last year, Gilliard said the
difference is not statistically significant.

"The numbers have been pretty steady throughout the 1990s, with a pretty
steady increase every year," he said.

Gilliard's report showed the number of inmates in state prisons grew 4.1
percent last year; the number in federal prisons grew 8.3 percent; and the
number in local jails grew 4.5 percent.

The figures closely track numbers released last summer that showed a 5.2
percent growth rate in federal and state prison inmates by the end of 1997