Chapter 6
Correctional Facilities: Prisons and Jails

Public views of crime and punishment have changed over the centuries. Yet in general most societies have moved from the extraction of personal or family justice—vengeful acts such as blood feuds or the practice of taking "an eye for an eye"—toward formal systems based on written codes and orderly processes. Jails and prisons have changed from being holding places where prisoners awaited deportation, maiming, whipping, or execution to places of extended—even lifelong—incarceration. Confinement itself has become the punishment.

HISTORY OF CORRECTIONS IN THE UNITED STATES

During the colonial period in the United States physical punishment was more common than incarceration. Stocks, pillories, branding, flogging, and maiming—such as cutting off an ear or slitting nostrils—were typical punishments meted out to offenders. The death penalty, too, was used frequently. In 1636 the Massachusetts Bay Colony listed thirteen crimes that warranted execution, including murder, practicing witchcraft, and worshipping idols. In early New York State, 20% of offenses, including pocket picking, horse stealing, and robbery, were capital crimes (warranting the death penalty). Jails were used to hold prisoners awaiting trial or sentencing or as debtors' prisons, but a stay in jail was not considered a punishment itself.

The Puritans of Massachusetts believed that humans were naturally depraved, which made it easier for some of the colonies and the first states to enforce harsh punishments. In addition, since Puritans maintained the view that individuals had no control over their fate (predestination), few early Americans supported the idea that criminals could be rehabilitated.

The Quakers, led by William Penn, made colonial Pennsylvania an exception to the harsh practices often found in the other colonies. The early criminal code of colonial Pennsylvania abolished executions for all crimes except homicide, replaced physical punishments with imprisonment and hard labor, and did not charge the prisoners for their food and housing.

The Reform Movement

The idea of individual freedom and the concept that people could change society for the better by using reason permeated American society during the 1800s. Reformers worked to abolish slavery, secure women's rights, and prohibit liquor, as well as to change the corrections system. Rehabilitation of prisoners became the goal of criminal justice, and inmates were given work to keep them busy and to defray the cost of their confinement. Prison administrators began constructing factories within prison walls or hiring inmates out as laborers in "chain gangs." In rural areas inmates worked on prison-owned farms. In the South prisoners—most of whom were African-American—were often leased out to local farmers. Prison superintendents justified the hard labor by arguing that it taught the offenders the value of work and self-discipline. Many free citizens, after all, earned their livings doing such work in factories and fields.

With the rise of labor unions in the North, the 1930s saw an end to the large-scale prison industry. Unions complained about competing with the inmates' free labor, especially amid the rising unemployment of the Great Depression. By 1940 the states had limited what inmates could produce. By 1970 the number of prison farms had decreased substantially because they were expensive to operate and the prisons found it cheaper to purchase food. In addition, agricultural work no longer prepared inmates for employment outside prison. Since the 1970s, however, support has grown for prison industries as a way to train inmates for outside jobs.

As crime increased during the late 1980s, criminal justice practices such as indeterminate sentencing, probation, parole, and treatment programs came under attack. Support decreased for rehabilitative programs and increased for keeping offenders incarcerated; many people subscribed to the idea that keeping criminals off the streets is the surest way to keep them from committing more crimes. As a result, the federal government and a growing number of states introduced mandatory sentencing and life terms for habitual criminals (often called "three strikes" laws after a baseball analogy, meaning that after three convictions "you're out"). They also limited the use of probation, parole, and time off for good behavior.

PRISONS AND JAILS COMPARED

Corrections institutions are organized in tiers by level of government and, at each level (federal, state, and local), specific types of institutions provide corrections functions based on the relative severity of the offenses committed. The most restrictive form of corrections is incarceration in a prison. Both the federal and the state governments operate their own prison systems; within the federal government, the military maintains its own prisons. Prison inmates serve time for serious offenses and are incarcerated for a year or longer.

Most people sentenced to jail serve less than a year for misdemeanors and offenses against the public order. Jails are operated at the local level—by cities and counties. The federal government operates some jails as well, and within the federal government, the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has its own detention facilities. In some states, jails and prisons are operated under a single state authority but still maintain the distinction—prisons for long terms and for serious offenses, jails for lesser terms and less serious offenses.

FEDERAL CORRECTIONS

The U.S. Bureau of Prisons (BOP) maintains institutions at five different security levels, and prisoners are assigned based on their offenses and behavioral history:

• Minimum Security : At the lowest security level are Federal Prison Camps (FPCs), such as those in Yankton, South Dakota, and Montgomery, Alabama. These facilities have dormitory housing, a relatively low staff-to-inmate ratio, and limited or no perimeter fencing. They are located on or near larger institutions or military bases, where the inmates participate in work programs.
• Low Security Federal Correctional Institutions (FCIs) : FCIs have fenced perimeters and dormitory cubicle housing. Inmates are typically involved in work programs.
• Medium Security FCIs : These facilities feature reinforced perimeter fencing, usually a double fence with an electronic detection system. In addition, inmates are housed in cells and have access to work and treatment programs.
• High Security United States Penitentiaries (USPs) : The most secure environment in the federal prison system includes highly secured perimeters with walls and reinforced fences. Inmates are held in multiple- or single-occupant cells, are closely watched, and do not have freedom to move around within the facility without supervision.
• Administrative Facilities : These facilities hold offenders awaiting trial or treat inmates with serious medical needs. Special facilities also may be used to house the most dangerous, violent, or escape-prone inmates. These include Metropolitan Correctional Centers (MCCs), Metropolitan Detention Centers (MDCs), Federal Detention Centers (FDCs), Federal Medical Centers (FMCs), the Federal Transfer Center (FTC), and the Administrative-Maximum USP (ADX).

The BOP administered 174 facilities as of 2007, including twenty-one high security penitentiaries, sixty-eight federal correctional institutions, and six minimum-security prison camps. At that time nearly six out of ten federal prisoners (57%) were held in low or minimum-security facilities, with 28% in medium-security institutions, and 11% maintained under high security. The remainder had not been assigned a security level.

Federal Inmate Populations

Paige M. Harrison and Allen J. Beck of the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) report in Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2005 (May 2006, http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/pjim05.pdf) that since 1995, the federal prison population has grown more quickly than the state prison population. The rate of growth in the federal prison population averaged 3% between 1995 and 2005 and reached its peak of 6% in the first six months of 1999. In the first six months of 2005 the number of federal inmates increased by 2.3%, more than twice the increase experienced at the state level.

The number of noncitizens held in federal prisons increased by 30% from 1998 to 2000 before falling in 2001; between 2001 and 2005, however, the number of noncitizens held in federal prisons increased by about 4%. (See Table 6.1.) In 2005 federal prisons held 35,285 noncitizen inmates in custody, representing about 19% of all prisoners in federal custody. In many cases these are individuals who were caught violating immigration and border security laws.

Harrison and Beck report in Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2005 that federal admissions (the number of new inmates added to the federal prison population) increased 21.2% from 43,732 in 2000 to 52,982 in 2004. During this period, the number of releases increased 32.2%, from 35,259 in 2000 to 46,624 in 2004. The number of admissions was higher in 2004 than the number of releases, resulting in an increase in the federal prison population that year of more than 6,300 inmates.

In Prisoners in 2005 (November 2006, http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/p05.pdf), Harrison and Beck report that more than half (55%) of all federal inmates were sentenced for drug offenses. This rate is down from 60% in 1995. Between 1995 and 2003, the number of federal inmates convicted of public-order offenses increased by 170%; most of this growth was due to a 394% increase in immigration offenses.

Federal Facilities and Staffing

The Federal Bureau of Prisons reports that in January 2007 federal prisons had 35,198 staff members (http://www.bop.gov/news/quick.jsp). Almost three-quarters (72.6%) of federal prison staff members were male. A majority (64.1%) were white; most of the remainder were African-American (21%), Hispanic (11.3%), Asian (2.1%), or Native American (1.5%). The federal government's total corrections payroll was $165.4 million in March 2003.

STATE CORRECTIONS

There are more than 1,300 state prisons in the United States, where inmates are housed whose crimes do not fall under the jurisdiction of the federal justice system. States administer their own sentences and budget for corrections based on their own laws and regulations. Most prison inmates in the United States are held in a state prison. In 2005, for example, according to Prisoners in 2005, roughly 1.3 million people were incarcerated in state prisons, compared with 179,000 held in federal custody.

State Inmate Populations

State prison populations have increased each year since 1995. On June 30, 2005, state prisons held 1,255,514 inmates, an increase of 1.3% since 2004 and of 2.5% since 1995, according to Harrison and Beck in Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2005. (See Table 6.2.)

In Prisoners in 2005 the researchers report that between January 1 and December 31, 2005, the largest increase (11.9%) in prison population occurred in South Dakota, followed by Montana (10.9%), Kentucky (10.4%), and Nebraska (7.9%). During this period, state prison populations declined in eleven states led by Georgia (down 4.6%), Maryland (2.4%), Louisiana (2.3%), and Mississippi (2.2%).

The number of state inmates under age 18 decreased from 2,485 on June 30, 2004, to 2,266 one year later, as reported in Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2005. The number of minors in state prisons reached its peak in 1995, when 5,309 juveniles were imprisoned, and has decreased every year since. However, the number of noncitizens held in state prisons increased by 13% between 1998 and 2005, from 49,417 to 55,832, even though a drop of 2.7% was registered between 2004 and 2005. (See Table 6.1.)

State prison admissions increased 11.5% from 625,219 in 2000 to 697,066 in 2004, according to Harrison and Beck in Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2005. Admissions outpaced releases during this period, with 672,202 prisoners released from state prisons during 2004, up from 604,858 in 2000.

State Facilities and Staffing

Various factors, many out of the control of prison officials, influence the costs of running a state prison. Among these variables are climate (heating costs in the Northeast are generally more expensive than in the South), local wage rates, and local cost of living. However, other costs are within the control of prison officials. State prisons with a high inmate-to-staff ratio, or fewer guards per prisoner, reported lower costs than those with large staffs, which had as many as one staff member for every 1.7 inmates. States with a few large prison facilities tended to have lower overall operating costs than those with many smaller facilities.

According to James J. Stephan of the Bureau of Justice Statistics in State Prison Expenditures 2001 (June 2004, http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/spe01.pdf), salaries, wages, and benefits for state prison employees made up about two-thirds of state prison operating expenditures in 2001. Operating costs include supplies, maintenance, and contractual services. About 4% was spent on new construction, renovations, major repairs, equipment, land, or buildings. Expenditures for new prison construction declined from $1.5 billion in 1996 to $1.1 billion in 2001.

Other operating costs for state prisons include medical care, food service, and utilities. By far the largest of these costs in 2001 was some $3.3 billion spent on prisoner medical care, followed by $1.2 billion for prisoner food, and $996 million for utilities. Nationwide, the average annual amount spent for medical care per prisoner was $2,625 (in comparison, U.S. citizens spent an average $4,370 per year on their own health care). The amount spent on prisoner medical care varied widely by state. Having a high number of inmates with drug and alcohol abuse problems can raise costs; operating larger prison facilities and thereby raising the average inmate-to-doctor ratio can save money. In 2001 Maine spent the most on prisoner medical care per inmate ($5,601), while Louisiana spent the least ($860). By region, the West averaged the most spent on medical care per inmate ($3,672), and the South averaged the least ($2,025). Annual food service costs tended to be lowest in those states, such as Mississippi ($297 per prisoner) and North Carolina ($191 per prisoner), where prisons operated their own farms and grew their own fruits and vegetables. In addition, North Carolina prisoners operate their own cannery and meat processing plant.

State and Federal Prisoners Held Elsewhere

IN PRIVATELY RUN PRISONS

According to the BJS in Prisoners in 2005 107,447 prisoners under the jurisdiction of federal and state correctional authorities were housed in private correctional facilities in 2005. This was an increase from 98,628 in 2004 and accounted for 6% of all state inmates and 14.4% of federal prisoners.

The number of state inmates in privately operated prisons increased from 73,860 to 80,401 between 2004 and 2005, an 8.8% increase. In comparison, the number of federal inmates in private facilities increased from 24,768 to 27,046, an increase of 9.2%. The states with the highest percentage of prisoners under private management were New Mexico (43%), Wyoming (41%), Hawaii (31%), Alaska (28%), and Montana (26%). Seventeen states had no prisoners in privately operated facilities in 2005: Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, and West Virginia.

IN LOCAL JAILS

Local jails held 747,529 inmates as of 2005, according to Harrison and Beck in Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2005. Of these, 73,097 were state or federal prisoners who were being housed in a local facility.

JAILS

In addition to confining offenders for short terms (usually a sentence of less than one year), jails administer community justice programs that offer alternatives to incarceration and hold:

• Suspects pending arraignment, trial, or sentencing or awaiting transfer to federal or state authorities
• Inmates unable to transfer to other jurisdictions because of overcrowding at those facilities
• Juveniles awaiting transfer to a juvenile detention facility
• Mental patients being transferred to a medical facility

• Military detainees being transferred to military authorities
• Individuals under protective custody or being held as trial witnesses

Local Inmate Populations

According to Harrison and Beck in Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2005, on June 30, 2005, the nation's jails held or supervised 819,434 inmates; 91% (747,592 inmates) of whom were behind bars and the rest (71,905 inmates) were supervised outside the jail in community service, work release, weekend reporting, electronic monitoring, and other alternative programs. The jail population increased by 4.7% between 2004 and 2005. (See Table 6.3.) This rate of increase was higher than the average annual growth of 3.9% between 1995 and 2005.

According to Harrison and Beck, the jail inmate population rose from 193 per 100,000 U.S. residents in 1995 to 252 per 100,000 in 2005. (See Table 6.4.) The average daily jail population for 2005 was 733,442, an increase of 3.9% from 706,242 in 2004 and of 43.9% from 509,828 in 1995. (See Table 6.5.)

Significant changes have occurred in the profile of the jail population in the ten-year period shown in Table 6.5. Men represented the overwhelming majority of jail inmates throughout the period, but the proportion of women has increased. In 1995, 51,300 women were incarcerated, representing 10.1% of the local jail population; in 2005, 93,963 women were incarcerated, representing 12.6% of local jail inmates, as reported in Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2005. In addition, the female jail population grew at an average annual rate of 6.2% between 1995 and 2005, compared with 3.7% for males. Although the overall number of inmates in local jails has been rising, the number of juveniles in adult jails has dropped from 7,800 in 1995 to 6,759 in 2005. (See Table 6.5.)

Facilities and Staffing

According to the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 2003, local jurisdictions had 3,376 jails in 1999, the last time the BJS conducted a jail census (http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/pdf/t198.pdf). There are 3,043 counties in the United States. The number of jails, therefore, is roughly equivalent to one per county plus additional jails in large urban areas. Their rated capacity was 660,361 in 1999, and 93% of this capacity was occupied. The South had the highest number of jails (1,623), followed by the Midwest (977), West (538), and Northeast (227). Texas had the highest number of jails in any state (271), followed by Georgia (204), California (145), and Alabama (155). These numbers include only facilities that hold inmates beyond their initial arraignment; local police lock-ups, for example, where suspects are held overnight awaiting formal charges, are not included in the count.

Two-thirds of jail staff members in 1999 were male; 66% of staffers were white, 24% were African-American, 8% were Hispanic, and 2% were of other races. Eighty-nine percent of inmates in 1999 were male; 41% of inmates were white, 42% African-American, 15% Hispanic (Hispanics may be of any race), and 2% of other races.

Privately Operated Jails

In 1993 the United States had seventeen privately operating jails. By 1999, according to the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 2003, the number had increased to 47 jails, with 16,656 offenders. Of these, 13,814 were inmates in the private jails and 2,842 were supervised by these facilities but not confined.

On average, private jails were bigger than those operated by public agencies. Excluding offenders supervised but not confined, the average population of the 47 private jails in 1999 was 294 inmates. Most inmates (89%) were male, as in the public jails. The racial composition was somewhat different from public facilities: 31.7% of inmates were white, 38% were African-American, 16% were Hispanic, and 14.2% were of other races.

Women accounted for nearly half of private jail staff members (46.3% of total staff, 40.8% of correctional officers). Private jail staff supervised 3.3 inmates per person, a somewhat higher workload than in publicly run jails (2.9 inmates per staff). Private correctional officers supervised 5.3 inmates each, one more than publicly employed guards (4.3).

Federal Jails

The federal government operated eleven jails in 1999, according to the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 2003. These facilities held nearly as many inmates as private jails—11,209, up from 5,899 in 1993. Federal jail inmates were overwhelmingly male (93%). The majority, 63%, were white; 32% were African-American, and 5% were of all other races. Federal jail staff was 74.5% male. The total employee-to-inmate ratio in 1999 was 3.6, and each correctional officer supervised 6.7 inmates. Federal jails were crowded; they operated at 39% above rated capacity—but the 1999 results were better than in 1993 when federal jails were 55% above capacity.

PRIVATE CORRECTIONAL FACILITIES

Rising prison populations and the need to expand the prison system in the states has led to calls for privatization. The basic assumption behind this idea is that the private sector is inherently more efficient and flexible than public bureaucracies because it is less constrained by regulations and is more cost effective. Private facilities also save the public the initial costs of prison construction, since those costs are assumed by private contractors. This saves the government from taking on long-term debt in order to build housing for more prisoners. In this view, a privatized or even a partially privatized corrections system would cost taxpayers less money. Corrections functions, however, are ultimately vested in governmental hands, and private prisons must operate under established rules and regulations. The complexity of corrections activities is such that comparisons between private and public facilities are very difficult to make, and the cost savings achieved by private corrections are in dispute because the evidence is inconclusive.

A 2002 report by Geoffrey F. Segal and Adrian T. Moore for the Reason Foundation (Weighing the Watchmen: Evaluating the Costs and Benefits of Outsourcing Correctional Services, http://www.reason.org/ps289.pdf) summarized twenty-eight previous studies comparing the costs of government-run and private prisons. Of the twenty-eight studies, which were conducted by government agencies, universities, auditors, and research organizations, twenty-two found significant cost savings from privatization. Segal and Moore also found that private facilities provide at least the same quality of services as government-run facilities.

However, the Federal Bureau of Prisons found that at least one private facility experienced many more problems than comparable public facilities. In Evaluation of the Taft Demonstration Project: Performance of a Private-Sector Prison and the BOP (October 7, 2005, http://www.bop.gov/news/research_projects/published_reports/pub_vs_priv/orelappin2005.pdf) the Bureau reported on a federal prison in Taft, California, that has operated as a demonstration of prison privatization since 1996. According to the report, the Taft Correctional Institution (TCI) had higher numbers than expected of most types of misconduct and a higher number than anticipated of positive results for random drug tests. TCI has also experienced particularly serious incidents of prisoner misconduct, including two escapes from inside the secure-perimeter fences and one general disturbance involving up to 1,000 inmates. During the same period, the BOP had three escapes altogether from the more than 100 public prisons it operates.

Despite the uncertainty, the privately run prison population has grown at a faster rate than the correctional population as a whole. At year-end in 2005, according to the BJS (Prisoners in 2005 ), 107,447 state and federal prisoners were in privately operated facilities. (See Table 6.6.) This is an increase of 7% from 2004, when 98,628 inmates were held in private facilities and of 18.7% since 2000, when private facilities had 90,542 inmates.

The Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 2003 reported that there were 264 private prisons in 2000, more than twice the number (110) of such facilities in 1995 (http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/pdf/t1102.pdf). The rated capacity of these facilities was 105,133 in 2000 and 89% of this capacity was occupied. In 1995, total private prison capacity was 19,294 and 86% of this capacity was occupied. Of the 264 private prisons in 2000, 4 were maximum security, 65 were medium security, and 195 were minimum or low security. Most were relatively small—132 held fewer than 100 inmates, 46 had 250 to 749 inmates, and 43 had 100 to 249 inmates.

INCREASING PRISON POPULATIONS

Overall, crime in the United States has decreased since the 1990s, and yet the prison and jail populations have been increasing rapidly. The inmate population in the United States is measured by the rate of incarceration—that is, the number of people sent by the courts to prisons and jails per 100,000 people in the general population. As reported by The Sentencing Project, an advocacy group promoting alternatives to incarceration, in New Incarceration Figures: Thirty-three Consecutive Years of Growth (December 2006, http://www.sentencingproject.org/Admin/Documents/publications/inc_newfigures.pdf), the United States had the highest incarceration rate in the world in 2005 with 737 individuals confined in prisons or jails per 100,000 population. This rate was higher than in Russia (611), Cuba (487), Israel (209), England (148), China (118), Germany (95), or Japan (62).

Some reasons for high rates of incarceration in the United States include:

• More people are being sent to prison; that is, fewer convicts are getting off with probation or parole.
• Mandatory sentencing rules require that some criminals be held for longer periods.
• Some courts are requiring stiffer sentences.

COMPARING THE CRIME RATE AND INCARCERATION RATE

The official crime rate, reported by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in its Uniform Crime Reports, has been in decline for more than a decade. In 1991, 758.2 violent crimes were committed for every 100,000 people; this rate dropped to 469.2 per 100,000 in 2005. The property crime rate also peaked in 1991 at 5,140.2 per 100,000 population; by 2005 the rate had fallen to 3,429.8 per 100,000. During the same period, however, the incarceration rate as reported by the BJS increased from 313 per 100,000 population in 1991 to 491 per 100,000 in 2005 (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/tables/incrttab.htm).

The incarceration rate for federal and state prisoners in the United States, excluding those in jail, has risen from a low of 79 per 100,000 in 1925 to 488 in 2005, according to the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 2003 (http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/pdf/t6282005.pdf). Beginning in 1925, the rate of incarceration of U.S. prisoners rose steadily for 15 years to a peak of 137 in 1939. The rate declined somewhat and more or less leveled out to between 100 and 120 for the next 35 years. Then, in the early 1970s, the rate began to rise steadily. From 1974 to 2002, the rate increased more than four-fold. The rate for males jumped from about 200 inmates per 100,000 people in the mid-1970s to over 900 per 100,000 at the turn of the twenty-first century. Female incarceration rates began to rise in the 1980s, from a steady rate of 10 per 100,000 population during the late 1970s to 65 per 100,000 by 2005.

Excluding inmates held in local jails, at midyear 2005 the United States had 488 prisoners per 100,000 population, an 18.7% increase from 411 in 1995 (Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2005 ). The rate of sentenced federal inmates increased by 72%, from 32 per 100,000 in 1995 to 55 per 100,000 in 2005. The rate for state prisoners increased 14%, from 379 per 100,000 in 1995 to 433 per 100,000 in 2005. (See Table 6.7.)

These two trends appear paradoxical. Part of the explanation is that the official crime rate does not track drug offenses—or related money laundering offenses and illegal weapons violations—which have been growing at high rates. As a result, the official crime rate and the incarceration rate do not always move in parallel because they do not reflect the same facts.

In Prisoners in 2005 Harrison and Beck report that the prison population increased 1.9% between 2004 and 2005; this growth rate was lower than the average annual growth rate of 3.1% since 1995. According to the BJS researchers, the number of inmates in state facilities grew 1.3% from 1,243,745 to 1,259,905 between December 31, 2004, and yearend 2005. The number of those under federal jurisdiction rose from 170,535 to 179,220 (5.1%). Overall, the annual rate of increase of prisoners under state and federal jurisdiction in 2005 (1.9%) was significantly lower than the increase experienced in 1995 (6.7%).

One trend that has contributed to the growth of prison populations is the rise in female populations in state and federal prison. Although state prisons hold many fewer females than males, the rate of growth in the female state prison population is higher than that of the male populations. Between 2004 and 2005 the female population grew by 3.4%, from 102,691 to 106,174; between 1995 and 2005 the female prison population increased by an average of 4.7% annually. (See Table 6.8.) The number of male state inmates increased by 1.3% between 2004 and 2005, from 1,389,143 to 1,406,649, and averaged an annual increase rate of 3% between 1995 and 2005.

The average percent change among sentenced prisoners in state or federal custody between 1995 and 2005 was highest in the western United States, where the average increase was 3.6% and the number of prisoners grew from 207,661 to 296,341. (See Table 6.9.) The average change between 1995 and 2005 was lowest, 2.7%, in the South, where the population of sentenced prisoners grew from 446,491 to 583,132.

Prison populations vary widely by state and region of the country. In 2005 some smaller states experienced the largest growth rate in their prison populations, according to Harrison and Beck. Among the states, the average percentage change was highest in North Dakota, where the number of prisoners increased an average of 9.3% per year from 1995 to 2005, followed by West Virginia (7.9%), Oregon (7.5%), and Idaho and Wisconsin (both at 7.4%).

Crowding in Prisons

From 1995 to 2005 overall capacity in the state and federal prison systems increased as the prison population grew. Old prisons were replaced with new ones; more prisoners were housed in privately operated prisons; and additions to capacity at existing sites added new beds. These additions have failed to keep up with the demand for prison space, however. According to Harrison and Beck in Prisoners in 2005, the federal system was operating at 134% of its rated capacity in 2005. In 2005, twenty-three states and the federal government were operating prisons at or above their highest capacity. The most overcrowded systems included Massachusetts and Illinois, which operated at 133% of their rated capacity, followed by Wisconsin (127%) and North Dakota (126%). (See Table 6.10.)

What does crowding mean? The American Correctional Association guidelines, Standards for Adult Correctional Institutions (2003), specify that a standard cell area should measure sixty square feet, and inmates should spend no more than ten hours per day in their cells. When crowding occurs, two inmates are often assigned to a cell designed for one person, or temporary housing units are set up to take prison overflow. Overcrowding makes it more likely that disagreements will rise between inmates, leading to violence and injuries. In addition, diseases are more likely to spread among the prison population.

Jail Capacity

"Rated capacity" is the maximum number of beds or inmates that may be housed in a jail. In 2005 U.S. jails added 33,398 beds to total jail capacity, bringing it to 789,001, according to Harrison and Beck in Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2005. (See Table 6.11.) This was the highest annual increase since 1995. Capacity use had dropped to 90% in 2001 but increased to 95% in 2005.