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1 Prisoners in State and Federal Institutions on December 31, 1977: Advance Report [1] (1977)

handle is hein.death/psfiar0001 and id is 1 raw text is: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE Law Enforcement Assistance Administration National Criminal Justice Information and Statistics Service National Prisoner Statistics Bulletin SD-NPS.PSF-5A, April 1978 Prisoners in State and Federal Institutions on December 31, 1977 Advance Report A record 292,325 prisoners were held in custody by Federal and State correctional authorities on December 31, 1977. Of these, 1,778 were housed in local jails because of overcrowding in State correctional facilities.1 Furthermore, 5,313 addi- tional prisoners, not included in the total, were held in local jails because of overcrowded prisons in six States that do not consider such prisoners to be under custody of State correctional author- ities. Taken together, 7,091 prisoners throughout the United States were housed in local jails for lack of space in State facilities; a year earlier the figure was 7,725. The yearend count was the third in a row to reach an all-time high, although the rate of growth in 1977 was only about half that of 1976.2 Although the overwhelming majority of the prison inmates were serving sentences of at least a year and a day, 13,732 were serving shorter sentences or were unsentenced .3 There were 12,055 women, representing 4 per- cent of the total, in Federal and State prisons on December 31, 1977. Consistent with the pattern of the last several years, the growth rate of the female portion of the prisoner population during 1977 was considerably higher than for males--10 percent versus 5 percent. Federal institutions held 30,920 prisoners on the last day of 1977, a rise of 6 percent over the num- ber reported 12 months earlier. For State juris- 1A11 1977 data are preliminary and subject to revision. These data were collected through the National Prisoner Statistics (NPS) program for the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration by the Bureau of the Census. 2Figures for December 31, 1976, and December 31, 1977, appear in the accompanying table; those for December 31, 1975, in Prisoners in State and Federal Institutions on December 31, 1975, NPS Bulletin No. SD-NPS-PSF-3, February 1977. 3Examples of unsentenced inmates were those held for safekeeping, those undergoing court -ordered dictions as a whole, the number of inmates increased 5 percent, from 249,305 to 261,405. There was a 6 percent increase in both the South and the North Central region and 4 percent in the Northeast but virtually no change in the West.4 Twelve States reduced their inmate population during 1977, compared with only four in 1976. The largest 1977 decline occurred in California (1,465); the next largest was in Mississippi (408), the only jurisdiction with a decrease in both 1976 and 1977. Among the 39 jurisdictions experiencing net increases in prisoners for 1977, Florida posted the largest (1,963), followed by Texas (1,722), New York (1,640), Michigan (1,439), and Louisiana (1,255). In the latter State, the growth resulted chiefly from the reassignment of a sizeable number of locally held prisoners to State facilities upgraded to meet occupancy standards. Among the eleven States housing inmates in local jails in order to alleviate overcrowding, only five--Maryland, South Carolina, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Oregon--considered them to be in the custody of the State correctional system. The other six jurisdictions--Alabama, Florida, Louisi- ana, Mississippi, New Jersey, and Virginia--did not consider them to be in State custody. Additional details from the 1977 count of inmates in State and Federal correctional facilities will be contained in a final report to be published this year. evaluation, civil narcotics addicts, and, in States operating an integrated jail-prison system, those held awaiting trial or sentencing. 4States included within each region are listed in the accompanying table.

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