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| Report: 1 in 37 adults either in prison or on parole |
| By Star Tribune |
| Published: 08/19/2003 |
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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 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 number of ex-prisoners means that more people 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 state and local government budgets. 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 population. Among men in 2001, 4.9 percent had done prison time, compared with 0.5 percent for women. Among black men in 2001, 16.6 percent 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 0.7 percent for Hispanic women and 0.3 percent for white women. The study projects that, by 2010, about 3.4 percent of the adult population will have had served time in prison. That translates to 7.7 million people. |
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