MORE HUMAN LIVES WASTED IN PRISON

The U.S. Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics reported this
week that the number of Americans under correctional supervision - prison,
jail, probation, parole - reached another new record at 6.6 million as of
Dec. 31, 2001. That's about 3.1 percent of the adult population, or one of
every 32 adult Americans. Those people actually behind prison bars number
just under 2 million. In 1972 about 330,000 Americans were in jail or
prison. Does anybody feel safer, with six times as many people
incarcerated, than he or she did in 1972? (As a percent of population, the
number of people in prison is about 4.4 times higher than in 1972.)

It looks as if, after dramatic increases in prison population for the last
20 years, incarceration rates show signs of beginning to level off. From
1995 through 2001 the correctional population grew at an annual rate of 3.6
percent (on top of almost tripling between 1980 and 1995). But from 2000 to
2001 the increase was 2.3 percent. Prison population at the state level is
unlikely to increase dramatically soon.

The state-level prison population grew by 0.3 percent last year, while the
federal prison population grew by 8 percent. States are cutting back on
growth in imprisonment, but the federal system's urge to incarcerate shows
no sign of abating. What's driving it is mostly the drug war.

Marc Mauer is assistant director of the Sentencing Project in Washington,
DC, which favors alternatives to incarceration. In a newspaper interview he
said the leveling off at the state level is due to declining crime rates
throughout the 1990s and the fiscal crisis most states are experiencing,
especially since 9/11, which is leading to cost cutting and sentencing
reform in some states. Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas all eased
sentencing laws, openly and explicitly to cut costs.

Louisiana, for example, eliminated mandatory minimum sentences for
non-violent crimes and liberalized its "three strikes" law. Mississippi
eased its "truth in sentencing" laws, allowing non-violent offenders to be
eligible for parole after serving a shorter portion of their sentence.
Texas simply increased the number of prisoners paroled by 31 percent
between 2000 and 2001.

The impact on African-Americans is especially disproportionate. One in 10
African-American males between 25-29 is in state or federal prison, about
half for drug offenses. About the same percentage of white males use drugs
as black males, but only 1 percent go to prison. Most states don't allow
felons or former felons to vote - ever. Thus 13 percent of black males will
not be allowed to vote this November. This decreases their sense of having
a stake in the community or the system.

It's becoming evermore clear: Fighting drugs with prison isn't working and
is creating new problems and resentments. That's the real story in the
prison population numbers. We can do better.