U.S. imprisonment rate falls to lowest
since 1997: Justice Department
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[December 30, 2016]
By Ian Simpson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. prison
population fell the most in almost four decades to 1.53 million inmates
in 2015, resulting in the lowest rate of incarceration in a generation,
the Department of Justice said on Thursday.
The drop has been driven by changes in federal and state corrections
policies that include drug treatment programs and the sentencing of
fewer nonviolent drug offenders to federal prisons, the department said
in its year-end report on prison populations.
Roughly one in 37 U.S. adults was under some form of correctional
supervision at the end of 2015, the lowest rate since 1994.
The number of federal and state inmates at the end of 2015 was down by
35,500, or 2.3 percent, from the year before, in the biggest drop since
1978, it said.
At the end of last year, there were 458 prisoners sentenced to more than
a year in state or federal prison for every 100,000 U.S. residents. That
number was the lowest since 1997, when it was 444, the report said.
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Forty percent of the decline in the U.S. prison population was among
federal inmates, whose numbers fell more than 7 percent to 196,500,
marking a third straight year of declines.
The Justice Department's one-time early release of about 6,000
nonviolent drug offenders in late 2015 accounted for much of the federal
drop. President Barack Obama also has shortened the sentences of 1,176
federal inmates, including 153 last week.
In state prisons, the number of inmates decreased by almost 2 percent to
1.33 million from 2014 to 2015, and 29 states showed a drop in the
number of their prisoners.
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A patrol vehicle is seen along the fencing at the Federal
Correctional Complex, including the Administrative Maximum
Penitentiary or "Supermax" prison, in Florence, Colorado February
21,2007. REUTERS/Rick Wilking/File Photo
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With the drop last year, the number of state and federal inmates has
declined about 6 percent since peaking in 2009 but is still well
above the level of 300,000 in 1978, the oldest data provided in the
report.
On an average day in 2015, an estimated 721,300 inmates also were
being held in city or county jails, where prisoners normally are
housed ahead of trial.
When people on probation or parole were added to the prison and jail
populations, an estimated 6.74 million people were under the
supervision of U.S. adult correctional systems at the end of last
year, the report said.
(Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Stve
Orlofsky)
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