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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

‘Three strikes’ fills jails, prisons

Siobhan McDonough Associated Press

WASHINGTON – Growing at a rate of about 900 inmates each week between mid-2003 and mid-2004, the nation’s prisons and jails held 2.1 million people, or one in every 138 U.S. residents, the government reported Sunday.

By last June 30, there were 48,000 more inmates – or 2.3 percent more – than the year before, according to the latest figures from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The total inmate population has hovered around 2 million for the past few years, reaching 2.1 million on June 30, 2002, and falling just below that mark a year later.

While the crime rate has fallen over the past decade, the number of people going to prison and jail is outpacing the number of inmates being released, said the report’s co-author, Paige Harrison. For example, the number of admissions to federal prisons last year exceeded releases by more than 8,000, the study found.

Harrison said the increase can be attributed largely to get-tough policies enacted in the 1980s and 1990s. Among them are mandatory drug sentences, “three-strikes-and-you’re-out” laws for repeat offenders and “truth-in-sentencing” laws that restrict early releases.

“As a whole, most of these policies remain in place,” she said. “These policies were a reaction to the rise in crime in the ‘80s and early ‘90s.”

Added Malcolm Young, executive director of the Sentencing Project, which promotes alternatives to prison: “We’re working under the burden of laws and practices that have developed over 30 years that focus on punishment and prison as our primary response to crime.”

He said many of those incarcerated are not serious or violent offenders but are low-level drug offenders. Young said one way to help lower the number is to introduce drug treatment programs that offer effective ways of changing behavior and to provide appropriate assistance for the mentally ill.

According to the Justice Policy Institute, which advocates a more lenient system of punishment, the United States has a rate of incarceration higher than any other country’s, followed by Britain, China, France, Japan and Nigeria.

There were 726 inmates for every 100,000 U.S. residents by June 30, 2004, compared with 716 a year earlier, according to the report by the Justice Department agency. In 2004, one in every 138 U.S. residents was in prison or jail; the previous year it was one in every 140.

Other findings include:

“ State prisons held about 2,500 youths under 18 in 2004. That compares with a peak, in 1995, of about 5,300. Local jails held about 7,000 youths, down from 7,800 in 1995.

“ In the year ending last June 30, 13 states reported an increase of at least 5 percent in the federal system, led by Minnesota, at about 13 percent; Montana at 10.5 percent; and Arkansas at 9 percent.

Among the 12 states that reported a decline in the inmate population were Alabama, 7 percent; Connecticut, 2.5 percent; and Ohio, 2 percent.