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The nation’s prison and jail population increased nearly 6 percent last year, from an estimated 1.6 million to more than 1.7 million by June 30, the Justice Department said Sunday.
That puts one in every 155 U.S. residents in jail as of midyear 1997, according to a new report by the department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics. For men, 1 in 95 is currently incarcerated. For Women, only 1 in 395 is incarcerated. As with other areas of the criminal and civil justice system, men are 4 times as likely to be incarcerated or punished than are women for similar crimes.
While not as striking as the way that American courts deal with the death penalty - as of July 1, 1997, there were 3,269 people on death row, of which 47 were women (1.44%). Of the 432 executed since 1976, only one has been a female (0.23%). Clear evidence of a society wide discrimination against males of all races.
However, the jump was slightly smaller than those recorded in earlier years. From 1990 to 1997, the number increased an average of 6.5 percent annually. The number of prisoners behind bars in state and federal institutions grew in 1997 by 55,198, or 4.7 percent. That was also less than the annual average increase, which has stood 7.7 percent since 1990.
Despite smaller than usual increases at the state and federal level, the figures for prisoners in local jails rose by more than the average. To a large part this is attributed to the hysteria associated with the family law which allows judges to incarcerate citizens, more than 98% of which are men, for non payment of child support and violation of other court ordered matters relating to the family law. The courts may impose "coercive" incarceration without a shred of accountability in such cases.
From July 1 to June 30, inmates in local jails grew by 48,587, or 9.4 percent, “considerably more than the 4.9 percent average annual growth since 1990,” the bureau said.
Crime Drops, Jailings Rise
The Sentencing Project, a private group that advocates less imprisonment and more use of creative alternatives, noted that the total U.S. prison population is still on the rise even though crime rates have been sliding steadily since 1992.
The 1997 figures “mark a quarter century of continuous increase in the national prison population, an unprecedented rise in the nation’s history,” the group said in a written statement. “This (rise) is primarily due to the ongoing impact of harsh sentencing policies and the growing number of offenders on probation and parole who are sent to prison.”
During the last 25 years, the federal and state inmate population has increased sixfold from just 200,000 in 1972, according to the group.
Only Russia Imprisons More
“On a per capita basis, the United States is now second only to Russia in its rate of incarceration and locks up its citizens at a rate five to 10 times that of most industrialized nations,” the group said.
The continued growth in inmates may account for the decrease in crime rates. But the Sentencing Project cautions that “any relationship can be vastly overstated” and notes that some of the figures are contradictory.
For example, crime increased between 1984 and 1991 while the prison population also increased 77 percent. Looking at the period from 1970 and 1995, the group reported that crime rates twice increased and twice decreased even though incarceration steadily rose.
“In New York City, which leads the nation in reducing crime, the decline in crime may be the result of changes in policing and other factors, but it is not the result of locking up more offenders,” the group said.
Other details of the report:
- Two-thirds of all inmates, more than 1.1 million, were in federal and state prisons, and the rest, 567,079 prisoners, were held in local facilities.
- Hawaii recorded the biggest prisoner increase with 21.6 percent, followed by North Dakota, up 15.5 percent, and Wisconsin, up 15.4 percent.
- The only states to report declines were Massachusetts, down .7 percent, Virginia, down .5 percent, and the District of Columbia, down .2 percent.
Data for the Bureau of Justice Statistics report were drawn from the 1997 National Prisoner Statistics program and the 1997 Annual Survey of Jails.
SOURCE: Streib, Capital Punishment for Female Offenders, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law (1991); Streib, Death Penalty for Female Offenders, 58 U. Cinn. Law Review 845 (1990).
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