By Ben Winslow
Deseret Morning News
SALT LAKE CITY — One in every 31 adults in the United States is either in prison, in jail, on probation or on parole, a new U.S. Justice Department study says.
The study released Thursday by the Office of Justice Programs’ Bureau of Justice Statistics said about 3.2 percent of the U.S. adult population -- or one in every 31 -- was behind bars or on probationby the end of 2007.
Despite the startling statistics, the number has remained relatively stable since 1999, the bureau said in a statement Thursday. About 2.3 million are incarcerated and another 5.1 million are under some kind of correctional supervision.
In Utah, the 2007 prison population was 6,509 inmates, the state Department of Corrections said. By the end of 2007, BJS figures had another 10,829 people on probation or parole. The numbers have steadily climbed, Utah Department of Corrections spokeswoman Angie Welling said.
“We’ve seen a little flattening out in the last part of 2008. It’s too early to tell if that’s going to continue or not,” she said Thursday. “The conventional wisdom is that as the economy sees a downturn there’s an uptick in prison population.”
To deal with the growing prison population, the Utah Department of Corrections has sought to expand its facilities at Point of the Mountain and in Gunnison. New units have already been added to the Central Utah Correctional Facility and a study is under way for a potential third site or an expansion of the prison at Draper.
The BJS study found the nation’s federal prisons experienced the largest population increase, followed by Florida, Kentucky and Arizona. Michigan and California’s prison populations experienced the greatest decrease in inmates.
Growth in the prison population slowed in 2007.
“After increasing 2.8 percent during 2006, the growth of the prison population slowed to 1.8 percent in 2007,” BJS statisticians Heather C. West and Dr. William J. Sabol wrote in their report published Thursday.
However, the prison population increased more rapidly last year than the U.S. resident population. As of Dec. 31, 2007, one out of every 198 U.S. residents were serving a sentence.
Breaking it down by race and gender, black men made up the largest percentage of the overall sentenced population. White men made up nearly 31 percent of the overall sentenced populations. Hispanic males made up about a fifth of it.
“The largest absolute number and percentage of sentenced females were white, followed by black females and Hispanic females,” the study said.
The figures prompted a human rights group to criticize the United States as the world’s leading jailer. Human Rights Watch said in a statement Thursday that Great Britain incarcerates only 153 people per 100,000 residents. In Canada it’s 108 and Italy it’s 83, the group said. The BJS report puts the number of incarcerated Americans at 506 per 100,000.
“That should prompt Americans to ask their leaders some tough questions,” the group’s David Fathi said in a statement on their Web site. “Why does the U.S. lock up seven times as many people as Canada? Why are other countries able to protect public safety while incarcerating far fewer people?” E-mail: bwinslow@desnews.com
Copyright 2008 The Deseret News Publishing Co.