From: [m--eg--n] at [ix.netcom.com] (Marnie Regen )
Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs,alt.drugs.culture,alt.law-enforcement,alt.crime
Subject: Prison population rises at record pace
Date: 5 Dec 1995 08:11:08 GMT

San Jose Mercury News
Monday December 4 1995
Lori Montgomery
Mercury News Washington Bureau

Prison population rises at record pace

Justice Department cites harsher sentences

Washington - The U.S. prison population climbed this year to more than 
1.1 million inmates as state and federal prisons logged their largest 
population increase since record-keeping began in 1923.

A report released Sunday by the Justice Department shows the number of 
Americans behind bars jumped nearly 90,000 during the 12 months ended 
in June, surpassing the largest previous one-year increase of 85,000 in

1989.

California showed a 5.2 percent increase - with 131,342 inmates in 
June, compared with 124,813 in June '94.

Some criminal justice experts bemoaned the news, warning that the 
nation is slaking a thirst for punishment at the expense of social 
programs that could stop crimes before they happen.  But others pointed

to the dramatically lower murder rates recorded last year in many of 
America's largest cities and argued that the get-tough policies of the 
past decade are working.

"Am I shocked and outraged that you've got a 90,000 increase?  I remain
very unalarmed by that," said Robert Bidinotto, author of the newly 
released book, "Criminal Justice? The Legal System vs. Individual 
Responsibility." "We are now scooping up the repeat and violent 
offenders that have been getting away for so long."

Justice Department officials said the growth spurt reflects the 
continuation of a national trend toward harsher punishment for violent 
criminals and drug offenders, who are increasingly likely to be 
sentenced to prison rather than released on probation.

It also reflects an increasing willingness among state officials to 
build more prisons: Texas accounted for the bulk of new inmates 
nationally, adding 34,000 felons to its prison rolls between June 1994 
and June 1995, according to the Justice Department report.  The state 
has spent $2 billion to construct 100,000 new prison beds since 1990 
and is challenging California for title to the world's largest prison 
system.

Most criminal justice experts describe the war on drugs as the single 
most important factor in rising rates of incarceration.  The number of 
people incarcerated for drug crimes has grown far more rapidly than 
criminals locked up for any other reason, with drug offenders jumping 
from 8 percent of all state inmates in 1980 to more than a quarter of 
all state inmates today.  At the same time, violent criminals occupy a 
decreasing share of prison cells, dropping from 57 percent in 1980 to 
about 45 percent today.

The transformation has been even more dramatic in the federal prison 
system, where drug offenders have increased 1000 percent since 1980 and
now comprise more than half of all federal inmates, said Allen Beck, 
chief of corrections statistics for the Justice Department's Bureau of 
Justice Statistics.