STATE TOPS IN PRISON POPULATION INCREASE

Sex Offender Cases, Meth Are Cited

Minnesota leads the nation in the rise of its prison population, which has
grown about 45 percent in the last five years, largely because of increases
in methamphetamine and sex offender cases.

The number of prisoners in the state rose 13.2 percent, from 7,612
prisoners to 8,613 prisoners, from the year ended June 30, 2003, to the
year ended June 30, 2004.

The nationwide increase was 2.3 percent, with a total of 2.1 million people
incarcerated in the nation's prisons and jails as of June 30, 2004,
according to figures released Sunday by the federal Bureau of Justice
Statistics.

Although Minnesota's prison population is increasing rapidly, the state
still ranks at the bottom for percentage of its population that is
incarcerated, said Liz Bogut, spokeswoman for the state Department of
Corrections.

The incarceration rate in Minnesota is 150 inmates per 100,000 in
population, which ties the state with Maine for the lowest rate in the
nation. The national average is 429 inmates per 100,000 population, Bogut said.

Most of the rapid increase in Minnesota's prison population involves
methamphetamine and sex offender cases, Bogut said.

In 2001, there were 139 methamphetamine offenders in Minnesota prisons,
compared with about 1,100 inmates now, she said.

"If Minnesota continues incarcerating people at this rate, it will have
11,000 inmates by 2010," Bogut said.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty has proposed a bonding initiative to expand the Faribault
state prison by more than 1,000 beds and is recommending $70 million in new
funds to cover the increased costs of incarcerating inmates.

The nation's total inmate population has hovered around 2 million for the
past few years.

While the crime rate has fallen over the past decade, the number of people
sent to prison and jail is outpacing the number of inmates released,
according to Paige Harrison, co-author of the latest report by the Bureau
of Justice Statistics. For example, the number of admissions to federal
prisons in 2004 exceeded releases by more than 8,000, the study found.

Harrison said the increase can be attributed largely to get-tough policies
enacted in the 1980s and '90s. Among them are mandatory drug sentences,
"three-strikes-and-you're-out" laws for repeat offenders and
"truth-in-sentencing" laws that restrict early releases.

"As a whole, most of these policies remain in place," she said. "These
policies were a reaction to the rise in crime in the '80s and early '90s."

Added Malcolm Young, executive director of the Sentencing Project, which
promotes alternatives to prison: "We're working under the burden of laws
and practices that have developed over 30 years that have focused on
punishment and prison as our primary response to crime."

He said many of those incarcerated are not serious or violent offenders but
low-level drug offenders. Young said one way to help lower the number is to
introduce drug treatment programs that offer effective ways of changing
behavior and to provide appropriate assistance for the mentally ill.

According to the Justice Policy Institute, which advocates a more lenient
system of punishment, the United States has a higher rate of incarceration
than any other country, followed by Britain, China, France, Japan and Nigeria.