Prison growth rates in U.S., Utah surge

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.

Utah's prison population grew 3.6 percent from June 30, 2003, to June 30, 2004, according to the report. It grew just .7 percent from the end of the 2003 to mid-2004.

The growth rate in Utah was about the same from the Bureau's previous report in November that said the state's prison population increased 3.6 percent from 5,562 in 2002 to 5,763 in 2003.

During last week's special session of the Utah Legislature, however, some lawmakers said the state's prison population was expected to hit maximum capacity by the end of the year.

In December, the prison's population made headlines when it hovered around 6,000 inmates. In August, corrections officials told lawmakers that that the prison's projected annual increase was 257 inmates and women inmates were growing at a faster rate than men — at about 6 percent annually.

Utah's prisoner incarceration rate was 239 per 100,000 residents as of June 30, 2004, according to the Bureau of Justice report.

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

While the crime rate has fallen over the past decade, the number of people in prison and jail is outpacing the number of inmates released, said the report's co-author, Paige Harrison. For example, the number of admissions to federal prisons in 2004 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 have focused on punishment and prison as our primary response to crime."