U.S. INMATES TOP 2 MILLION FOR FIRST TIME

Get-Tough Policies Lead to Longer Terms Behind Bars

WASHINGTON - The number of people in U.S. prisons and jails last year
topped 2 million for the first time, driven by get-tough sentencing
policies that mandate long terms for drug offenders and other criminals,
the government reported yesterday.

The federal government accounted for more inmates than any state, with
almost 162,000, according to a report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics,
part of the Justice Department. That number includes the transfer of about
8,900 District of Columbia prisoners to the federal system.

California, Texas, Florida and New York were the four biggest state prison
systems, mirroring their status as the most populous states.

But Texas, California, New York, Illinois and five other states saw their
inmate populations drop compared with the year before as prison releases
outpaced admissions.

Some states modified parole rules to deal with budget shortfalls, leading
to an overall growth rate in state prison populations of less than 1
percent from June 2001 to June 2002. The federal prison population grew by
5.7 percent.

The inmate population on June 30, 2002, was 2.1 million, an increase of 2.8
percent from the year before. Two-thirds were in federal or state prisons,
with the other third held in jails, the report said.

The report did not count all juvenile offenders, which if included in the
past would have driven the nation's inmate population over the 2 million
mark years ago. But the report did note that there were more than 10,000
inmates younger than 18 held in adult prisons and jails last year.

Malcolm Young, executive director of The Sentencing Project, said the
increase continues a prison growth trend stemming from tough penalties
meted out to drug abusers and traffickers as well as "three strikes" laws
that can mandate life sentences for repeat offenders.

This is especially true at the federal level, where efforts to reduce
sentences for such crimes as crack cocaine trafficking -- far higher than
sentences for dealing in powder cocaine -- have failed in Congress.