STUDY: 1 IN 37 IN U.S. HAD 'PRISON EXPERIENCE'

Total of 5.6 million imprisoned or previously incarcerated at end of
2001 WASHINGTON - About one in every 37 U.S. adults was either
imprisoned at the end of 2001 or had been incarcerated at one time,
the government reported Sunday.

The 5.6 million people with "prison experience" represented about 2.7
percent of the adult population of 210 million as of Dec. 31, 2001,
the report found. The study by the Justice Department's Bureau of
Justice Statistics looks at people who served a sentence for a crime
in state or federal prison, not those temporarily held in jail.

The study is the first to measure the prevalence of prison time among
American adults. Last month, the bureau reported that a record 2.1
million people were in federal, state or local custody at the end of
2002.

Between 1974 and 2001, the number of current and former inmates rose
by 3.8 million, the study found. Of those, 2.7 million were former
inmates.

Experts say the growing numbers of ex-prisoners means more people in
society have difficulty finding jobs because they have felony
convictions. Many cannot vote and they are more likely to have family
or emotional problems that exact a toll on state and local government
budgets.

"We're talking about a large number of people - bigger than a lot of
countries in Western Europe - who face the barriers that exist when
you have been in the correctional system," said Jason Zeidenberg,
director of policy and research at the Justice Policy Institute, which
advocates alternatives to prison. "That's a really upsetting number."

The number of people sent to prison for the first time tripled from
1974 to 2001 as sentences got tougher, especially for drug offenses.
There are more ex-prisoners, the result of longer life expectancies
and a larger U.S. population.

Prison experiences vary greatly by gender and ethnic
origin.

"At every age, men have higher chances of going to prison than women,
and blacks and Hispanics have higher chances than whites,"
statistician Thomas P. Bonczar said in the report.

Almost 5 percent of men in 2001 had done prison time, compared with
less than 1 percent of women.

Almost 17 percent of black men in 2001 had prison experience, compared
with 7.7 percent of Hispanic men and 2.6 percent of white men. The
percentage of black women with prison time was 1.7 percent, compared
with less than 1 percent of Hispanic and white women.

People between ages 35 and 44 in 2001 had the highest rates of
lifetime incarceration - 6.5 percent for men, about 1 percent for women.

About one-third of the former prisoners in 2001 still were under
correctional system supervision.