Prison Population Continues to Grow in United States

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, July 28, 2003

Prison Population Continues to Grow in United States

America's prison population grew to 2.1 million in 2002, a 2.6 percent increase over 2001, according to a report released Sunday by the US Bureau of Justice Statistics.

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America's prison population grew to 2.1 million in 2002, a 2.6 percent increase over 2001, according to a report released Sunday by the US Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Experts say mandatory sentences, especially for nonviolent drugoffenders, are a major reason inmate populations have risen for 30years.

Drug offenders now make up more than half of all federal prisoners. There are more than 151,600 drug offenders in 2002, an increase of 4.2 percent compared with 2001.

In the United States, about one of every 143 residents was in the federal, state or local custody at the end of 2002..

According to the official statistics, as of last Dec. 31, therewere 97,491 women in state or federal prisons, or about 6.8 percent of all inmates and one in every 1,656 women. There were over 1.3 million male inmates, or about one in 110 men.

About 10 percent of all black men between 25 and 29 were incarcerated last year, compared with 1.2 percent of white men and2.4 percent of Hispanic men.

The large prison population cost the federal and state governments an estimated 40 billion dollars a year.

The cost of housing, feeding and caring for a prison inmate is roughly 20,000 dollars per year, according to The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit organization that promotes alternatives to prison.

"The prison population and budget figures, taken together, should be setting off alarm bells in state capitols," said Jason Zeidenberg, director of policy and research for the Justice PolicyInstitute, a nonprofit organization focused on ending reliance on incarceration.

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