NUMBER OF U.S. INMATES RISES 2 PERCENT

WASHINGTON -- Prisons and jails added more than 1,000 inmates each
week for a year, putting almost 2.2 million people, or one in every
136 U.S. residents, behind bars by last summer.

The total on June 30, 2005, was 56,428 more than at the same time in
2004, the government reported Sunday. That 2.6 percent increase from
mid-2004 to mid-2005 translates into a weekly rise of 1,085 inmates.

Of particular note was the gain of 33,539 inmates in jails, the
largest increase since 1997, researcher Allen J. Beck said. That was
a 4.7 percent growth rate, compared with a 1.6 percent increase in
people held in state and federal prisons.

Prisons accounted for about two-thirds of all inmates, or 1.4
million, while the other third, nearly 750,000, were in local jails,
according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Beck, the bureau's chief of corrections statistics, said the increase
in the number of people in the 3,365 local jails is due partly to
their changing role. Jails often hold inmates for state or federal
systems, as well as people who have yet to begin serving a sentence.

"The jail population is increasingly unconvicted," Beck said. "Judges
are perhaps more reluctant to release people pretrial."

The report by the Justice Department agency found that 62 percent of
people in jails have not been convicted, meaning many of them are
awaiting trial.

Overall, 738 people were locked up for every 100,000 residents,
compared with a rate of 725 at mid-2004. The states with the highest
rates were Louisiana and Georgia, with more than 1 percent of their
populations in prison or jail. Rounding out the top five were Texas,
Mississippi and Oklahoma. A-P correspondent Tim Maguire reports the
latest statistics show a growing prison inmate population in this country.