PRISON POPULATION INCHES UP

1.1% Increase Last Year Is Lowest In U.S. Since 1972, Report Says

The nation's prison population grew at the lowest rate since 1972 last year
and had the smallest numerical increase since 1979, before the prison boom
began, according to a federal report issued Tuesday.

In the last half of 2001, the number of state prison inmates fell by 3,700,
the report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics said. Altogether, 2.1
million Americans were in state and federal prisons or in local jails at
the end of 2001.

The small increase in the number of inmates for the year, 1.1 percent,
comes as crime is starting to increase after a decade of declining. But
criminal justice experts said there was no contradiction between the trends.

In part, this is because of the lag between the commission of a crime and
the arrest, conviction and sentencing to prison of the criminal, said Allen
J. Beck, a co-author of the report and chief prison demographer for the
Bureau of Justice Statistics, the statistical branch of the Justice Department.

In addition, said Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon
University, the number of inmates grew more slowly not only because of
falling crime but also because more and more states have begun rethinking
prison policies. This rethinking is both a way to save money at a time of
state budget crunches and a result of efforts to find new ways to deal with
the drug problem, Mr. Blumstein said.

For example, Texas, with more prison inmates than any other state, with
162,070 at the end of 2001, also had the largest drop in inmates last year,
down by 4,600, the report found. This was because severe budget constraints
prompted the state to speed parole releases last year and to find
alternatives for parole violators rather than simply revoking their parole
and sending them back to prison, Mr. Beck said.

Similarly, in California, the number of state prison inmates fell to
159,444 at the end of 2001, down 3,557, in part because of the impact of a
ballot referendum requiring drug treatment rather than prison time for
nonviolent drug offenders.

But these declines in populous states were offset by increases in a number
of small states and in the federal prison system, leading to the overall
1.1 percent increase in the prison population. West Virginia had the
biggest percentage increase, 9.3 percent.