By C1 Staff
WASHINGTON — New Bureau of Justice statistics report that the U.S. prison population has dropped between 2013 and 2014.
News Week reports that the population is down 1 percent to 1.56 million people.
Nearly a third of the decline can be attributed to the federal prison population; there were also 10,100 fewer state prisoners at the end of 2014.
Despite this decline, many states in the prison system are still operating at over 100 percent capacity. Seven states house at least 20 percent of their prison population in privately operated facilities.
The private prison population has swollen to 131,300 in 2014 from 69,000 in 1999.
The report also included information on the race and crimes of those incarcerated. African-American males make up 37 percent of the sentenced male population, while white and Hispanic males totaled 32 and 22 percent respectively.
White women make up the majority of incarcerated females with 53,100 prisoners, while African-American women totaled at 22,600 and Hispanic women totaled at 17,800.
Fifty-three percent of state prisoners were incarcerated for violent crimes in 2013, while 16 percent were there for drug charges.
On the federal level, however, 50 percent were serving sentences for drug crimes while only 7 percent were listed as violent offenders.