April 7,
2003
Prison Rates Among Blacks Reach a Peak, Report
Finds
By FOX BUTTERFIELD
An estimated 12 percent
of African-American men ages 20 to 34 are in jail or
prison, according to a
report released yesterday by the Justice Department.
The proportion of
young black men who are incarcerated has been rising in
recent years, and
this is the highest rate ever measured, said Allen J. Beck,
the chief prison
demographer for the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the
statistical arm of the
Justice Department.
By comparison, 1.6 percent of white men in the same
age group are
incarcerated.
The report found that the number of
people in United States jails and prisons
exceeded 2 million for the first
time last year, rising to 2,019,234.
That represented an increase of 0.3
percent in the number of people behind
bars, in keeping with a slowdown in
the prison boom since the late 1990's,
Mr. Beck said. But the number of
inmates is still four times what it was
before the enormous increase in the
prison population began in the
mid-1970's.
The small growth in the
overall prison population last year included larger
changes in some states,
the report found.
California, which has the largest state prison system,
with 160,315 inmates,
had a 2.2 percent decrease in its number of prisoners
in 2002.
Texas, which has the second-largest state prison system, with
158,131
inmates, had a drop of 3.9 percent, the report said.
New
York, with the fourth-largest state prison system, had a decline of 2.9
percent.
In California, much of the decline stemmed from a ballot
referendum two years
ago that mandated treatment rather than prison time for
nonviolent drug
crimes.
The drop in Texas was the result of efforts
by state prison officials to save
money by finding alternatives to
imprisoning parole violators, Mr. Beck said.
In New York the decline was
the result of the drop in crime, he said.
The report found that last
year, for the first time, the size of the federal
prison system surpassed
that of any state's, with 161,681 inmates.
Some of this growth in the
federal prison system was accounted for by the
Federal Bureau of Prisons'
takeover of prisons operated by the government of
the District of Columbia.
But it also is part of the expansion of the federal
prison system in recent
years as Congress has increased the number of federal
offenses, including
many drug crimes and gun possession cases.
The report found that the
overall prison population was relatively stable
last year, but there was a
5.4 percent increase in the number of people
confined in local and county
jails, with the number rising to 665,475. This
was the largest growth in the
jail population in five years.
Generally, people sent to jail are
awaiting trial or serving sentences of a
year or less.
Mr. Beck said
the growth in the number of jail inmates could be a result of
the increase
in crime last year, especially property crimes like burglary,
with more
suspects now awaiting trial.
Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at
Carnegie Mellon University, said the
report highlighted variations in the
way states use prisons in their approach
to reducing
crime.
Louisiana, for instance, had an incarceration rate of 799 inmates
per 100,000
of its population, the highest rate in the nation. But Maine,
which had the
lowest rate, incarcerated 137 inmates per 100,000 of its
citizens.
Some of this disparity reflects a higher crime rate in
Louisiana compared
with Maine, Professor Blumstein said. "But the disparity
goes way beyond that
into differences in punitiveness," he
said.
"People tend to think of us as one nation with one culture,"
Professor
Blumstein said. "I don't think the disparities between states are
widely
appreciated."
Mr. Beck said that the 12 percent of black men
in their 20's and early 30's
in jail or prison was "a very dramatic number,
very significant."
That is just the rate on a given day, Mr. Beck said.
Over the course of a
lifetime, the rates are much higher, he said. The
Bureau of Justice
Statistics has calculated that 28 percent of black men
will be sent to jail
or prison in their lifetime.