One In 31 US Adults In Jail or On Probation

One in 31 U.S. adults was either in jail, or on probation or parole at the end of 2006, reports the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). The 7.2 million men and women (3.2 percent of the total adult population) who made up the "correctional population," represented a one-year increase of 159,500 people. Of the total 7.2 million, an all-time record 5 million people were reported to be on the streets under supervised probation or parole.

Prison Expansion Keeping Pace: The state prisons appear to be expanding rapidly enough to satisfy the growing demand for their services. At year-end 2006, BJS reports that state prisons were operating between 98 percent and 114 percent of capacity, compared to between 100 percent and 115 percent in 2000.

That's little salve to prison-strapped states like California, where Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, in October 2006, authorized corrections officials to ship thousands of medium-security California inmates to prisons in Indiana, Arizona, Oklahoma and Tennessee. On May 16, 2007, California state prisons housed 171,608 inmates, compared to 198,108 inmates reported in the all of the nation's federal prisons. The state's 2007-2008 budget allocates $10 billion for prisons, compared to $12 billion for colleges.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics is a component of the U.S. Department of Justice, a Cabinet-level agency.

Also See:
CA May Soon Spend More on Prisons than Colleges
Want to Live Longer? Try Going to Prison
So, Who's in Jail Now?