Increase in Prison Population

It would be no exaggeration to say that during the past two decades the U.S. prison system has been a growth industry. There are now more than 2 million people behind bars in America, with an incarceration rate above 700 per 100,000 (if we include jails), triple what it was 20 years ago. The United States is way ahead of other industrial democracies, whose incarceration rates tend to cluster in a range from around 55 to 120 per 100,000 population. Some countries have incarceration rates well below that range, such as Japan's rate of 37. Canada has a rate of only 115. The average incarceration rate for all countries of the world is around 80 per 100,000. Thus, America's incarceration rate is almost nine times greater than the average country.

Table 1 shows changes in the U.S. prison system during the past 75 years. Note that the most significant increases have occurred since the mid-1980s, when the war on drugs began to have its effects on jail and prison populations. Indeed, a recent estimate is that convictions for drugs accounted for almost one half of the increase in state prison inmates during the 1980s and early 1990s. Between 1988 and 1994, the number of prisoners who had been convicted of drug offenses went up by 155.5%. By comparison, only modest increases were seen for violent and property offenders. Between 1980 and 1992, court commitments to state prisons on drug charges alone increased by more than 1,000%.

The increase for women offenders has been even more striking. From 1925 to 1975, there was virtually no change in their rate of incarceration. Then, between 1975 and 2000, their incarceration rate increased by more than 600%, twice the rate of increase for males. Once again, this increase can be explained by drug policies, since the proportion of women sent to prison for drug offenses jumped from around 10% in the early 1980s to more than one third in the 1990s. In the federal system, the growth rate is even more dramatic. Whereas in 1984 a total of 28% of female offenders were drug offenders, by 1995 their percentage had more than doubled to 66%.

That the drug war has contributed to rising prison populations is further supported with data from U.S. district courts (federal system) showing that whereas in 1982 about 20% of all convictions were for drugs, by 1994 this percentage had increased to about 36. During this same period, the proportion of those convicted on drug charges who were sentenced to prison increased from 74% in 1982 to 84% in 1994, and their actual sentences increased from an average of 55 months in 1982 to 80 months in 1994. The average sentences for murder during this time actually decreased from 162 months to 117 months, while for all violent offenses the average sentence declined from 133 months to 88 months. At present, all of these changes have meant that on any given day, almost 60% of all federal [Page 466]prisoners are serving time for drug offenses; of these, 40% are African American.

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