STUDY FINDS RISE IN ADULTS WITH 'PRISON EXPERIENCE'

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, as well, the result of longer life
expectancies and a larger U.S. population.