US Prison Population Still On The Rise

This report presents data from the National Prisoner Statistics program. It describes the change in the prison population during 2007 and also the characteristics of the 1,598,316 prisoners under state or federal jurisdiction on December 31, 2007. Additionally, it provides the imprisonment rates and age, race, gender distributions for the 1,532,817 prisoners sentenced to more than one year. It quantifies changes in prison admissions and releases,
inmates held in custody, prison capacity, and components of the total incarcerated population.

Growth in the prison population slowed during 2007. At yearend 2007, federal and state correctional authorities had jurisdiction over 1,598,316 prisoners (1,483,896 males; 114,420 females) (table 1). Jurisdiction refers to the legal authority over a prisoner, regardless of where the prisoner is held. After increasing 2.8% during 2006, the growth of the prison population slowed to 1.8% during 2007. The 1.8% increase was slower than the average annual growth
witnessed from 2000 to 2006 (2.0%). During 2007, the prison population increased more rapidly than the U.S. resident population. The imprisonment rate— the number of sentenced prisoners per 100,000 residents— increased from 501 prisoners per 100,000 U.S. residents
in 2006 to 506 prisoners per 100,000 U.S. residents in 2007. From 2000 through 2007, the imprisonment rate increased from 475 per 100,000 U.S. residents to 506 per
100,000 U.S. residents. During these seven years, the number of sentenced prisoners increased by 15% while the general population increased by 6.4%.

As in previous years (with the exception of 2002) the majority of the 2007 growth in the prison population occurred during the first 6 months of the year December 31, 2006 to June 30, 2007, the prison population increased by 1.5%, whereas from June 30, 2007 to December 31, 2007, the prison population increased 0.2%.
BOJ Study