U.S. INMATE POPULATION GROWING AT SLOWER RATE

Federal Prisons See Most Of Increase

WASHINGTON -- The number of people in U.S. prisons and jails increased last
year at the slowest rate in three decades, the Justice Department reported
yesterday.

The total population increased a bit more than 1 percent, nearing 2
million, according to the department's annual report. As of June 30, 2001,
one of every 145 U.S. residents was behind bars.

Tougher anti-crime policies, more facilities and longer sentences have been
cited as reasons for the decades-long increase in the prison population.
Most of the growth between 2000 and '01 came in federal facilities.

"It appears the state prison population has reached some stability," said
Allen Beck, a statistician with the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Crime rates have dropped, parole violations have stabilized, and state
legislatures in recent years have not enacted the kind of sentencing
reforms passed in the early 1990s.

Beck said the federal system could continue to grow as federal caseloads
swell with drug, immigration and weapons prosecutions.

"The federal government is out of step with states that are finding more
economical and humane ways to hold nonviolent offenders accountable for
their actions," said Vincent Schiraldi, president of the Justice Policy
Institute, a Washington think tank that urges reforms at the federal level.

Overall, there were 1,965,495 people in custody in federal and state
prisons and local jails in June 2001, a 1.6 percent increase from the
previous year.

The bulk of the prison population is at the state level, which increased by
0.4 percent. The number of federal prisoners increased by 7.2 percent.

After several years of steady increases, the Ohio prison population
decreased by 2 percent last year, to 44,669, according to the state
Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.

Longstanding racial and ethnic disparities remained in the national count,
particularly among younger black men.

For instance, 13.4 percent of 25- to 29-year-old black men were in prison
or jail, compared with 4.1 percent of Latino men and 1.8 percent of white
men of the same age.