Pubdate: Mon, 18 Aug 2003
Source: Wilmington Morning Star (NC)
Copyright: 2003 Wilmington Morning Star
Contact:  http://www.wilmingtonstar.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/500
Author: Curt Anderson, Associated Press

REPORT FINDS PRISON NOT UNCOMMON

WASHINGTON - About one in every 37 U.S. adults was either imprisoned at the 
end of 2001 or had been incarcerated at one time, the government reported 
Sunday.

The 5.6 million people with "prison experience" represented about 2.7 
percent of the adult population of 210 million as of Dec. 31, 2001, the 
report found. The study by the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice 
Statistics looks at people who served a sentence for a crime in state or 
federal prison, not those temporarily held in jail.

The study is the first to measure the prevalence of prison time among 
American adults. Last month, the bureau reported that a record 2.1 million 
people were in federal, state or local custody at the end of 2002.

Between 1974 and 2001, the number of current and former inmates rose by 3.8 
million, the study found. Of those, 2.7 million were former inmates.

Experts say the growing numbers of ex-prisoners means more people in 
society have difficulty finding jobs because they have felony convictions. 
Many cannot vote and they are more likely to have family or emotional 
problems that exact a toll on government budgets.

"We're talking about a large number of people - bigger than a lot of 
countries in Western Europe - who face the barriers that exist when you 
have been in the correctional system," said Jason Zeidenberg, director of 
policy and research at the Justice Policy Institute, which advocates prison 
alternatives. "That's a really upsetting number."

The number of people sent to prison for the first time tripled from 1974 to 
2001 as sentences got tougher, especially for drug offenses. There are more 
ex-prisoners as well, the result of longer life expectancies and a larger 
U.S. population.

"At every age, men have higher chances of going to prison than women, and 
blacks and Hispanics have higher chances than whites," statistician Thomas 
Bonczar said in the report. Almost 5 percent of men in 2001 had done prison 
time, compared with less than 1 percent of women.

Almost 17 percent of black men in 2001 had prison experience, compared with 
7.7 percent of Hispanic men and 2.6 percent of white men. The percentage of 
black women with prison time was 1.7 percent, compared with less than 1 
percent of Hispanic and white women.

No matter their ethnic origin, people between ages 35 and 44 in 2001 had 
the highest rates of lifetime incarceration - 6.5 percent for men, almost 1 
percent for women. About one-third of the former prisoners in 2001 still 
were under correctional system supervision, including 166,000 in local 
jails. The rest were either on parole or on probation.
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart