“The correctional population of 6,889,800 includes people incarcerated in prisons and jails as well as those on probation and parole,” the agency reported. Of that figure, 2,078,570 adults were locked up in federal and state prisons and local jails. “And as of December 31, 2003,” the BJS reported, “4,073,987 adults were on probation—a period of supervision in the community following a conviction—and 774,588 on parole—a period of conditional supervised release following a prison term.”

This “correctional population increased by 130,700 since 2002. Some 57,600 of that jump was to the prison and jail population, the rest were on probation or parole.

“From July 1, 2002, to June 30, 2003, the number of state and federal prisoners grew by more than 2.9 percent, the largest increase in four years,” the BJS reported in a May 27 press release. “During the same period, the local jail population increased by 3.9 percent.” The fastest growing section of the prison population is the federal prison system with an average annual growth rate since 1995 of 8 percent.

The increase in the past year is still proportionally smaller than most of the annual increases during the administration of William Clinton. Under Clinton’s watch, from 1993-2000, the total “correctional population” ballooned by almost 1.6 million, at an average annual rate of 225,000.

The number of those on parole in the United States, 774,588, grew by 3.1 percent in 2003—“almost double the average annual growth of 1.7 percent since 1995,” according to the BJS. Five states—North Dakota, Alabama, Kentucky, New Hampshire, and New Mexico—had increases of over 20 percent.

Workers and farmers who are Black and Latino comprised a disproportionate percentage of those locked up or under state supervision.

Some 12 percent of all Black males in their twenties were in jails or prisons as of June 30, 2003, according to the agency. Of the male Latino population in that age group, 3.7 percent were locked up, compared to 1.6 percent of white males in their twenties. Sixty-eight percent of those locked up were classified by the prison agency as “members of racial or ethnic minority groups.”

Of those on parole, 13 percent were women, 41 percent were Black, and 18 percent were Latino, the agency reported.

The booming business of private imprisonment continued to expand last year, but at a lower rate than the overall growth of the prison population. The number of inmates held in private prisons—6.5 percent of the total in 2003—increased by 1.3 percent last year. Texas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee now hold half of their inmates in private prisons.  
 
 
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