PRISONS SWELL BY 900 INMATES PER WEEK IN '04

Mississippi had 20,542 prisoners under the jurisdiction of state and federal
correctional authorities on June 30, 2003, and 20,429 on June 30, 2004,
equaling a -0.6 percentage change.

Growing at a rate of about 900 inmates each week between mid-2003 and
mid-2004, the nation's prisons and jails held 2.1 million people, or one in
every 138 U.S. residents, the government reported Sunday.

By last June 30, there were 48,000 more inmates, or 2.3 percent, more than
the year before, according to the latest figures from the Bureau of Justice
Statistics.

The total inmate population has hovered around 2 million for the past few
years, reaching 2.1 million on June 30, 2002, and just below that mark a
year later.

While the crime rate has fallen over the past decade, the number of people
in prison and jail is outpacing the number of inmates released, said the
report's co-author, Paige Harrison. 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 1990s. 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
are 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.

There were 726 inmates for every 100,000 U.S. residents by June 30, 2004,
compared with 716 a year earlier, according to the report by the Justice
Department agency. In 2004, one in every 138 U.S. residents was in prison or
jail; the previous year it was one in every 140.

In 2004, 61 percent of prison and jail inmates were of racial or ethnic
minorities, the government said. An estimated 12.6 percent of all black men
in their late 20s were in jails or prisons, as were 3.6 percent of Hispanic
men and 1.7 percent of white men in that age group, the report said.

Other findings include:

- -State prisons held about 2,500 youths under 18 in 2004. That compares with
a peak, in 1995, of about 5,300. Local jails held about 7,000 youths, down
from 7,800 in 1995.

- -In the year ending last June 30, 13 states reported an increase of at least
5 percent in the federal system, led by Minnesota, at about 13 percent;
Montana at 10.5 percent; Arkansas at 9 percent.

Among the 12 states that reported a decline in the inmate population were
Alabama, 7 percent; Connecticut, 2.5 percent; and Ohio, 2 percent.