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8 Crim. Behav. & Mental Health 3 (1998)

handle is hein.journals/cbmh8 and id is 1 raw text is: Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health, 8, 1-6 1998 D Whurr Publishers Ltd Editorial In the midst of many social changes in western democratic countries an important and dangerous development is taking place with little debate, analysis or concern. A massive increase in the use of imprisonment has passed relatively unnoticed. Yet the numbers are dramatic and the implications sub- stantial. As with other such social changes, the United States leads the world. In 1980 there were half a million people in US prisons. By the end of 1996 there were 1.6 million. Since 1985 the prison and jail population there has grown by 8% a year. In California the state prison population is now more than six times bigger than it was at the end of the 1970s. In Texas the state prison pop- ulation increased from 37 000 in 1986 to 145 000 in 1996. At the end of 1985 one in every 320 US residents was locked up. At the end of 1995 the figure was one in every 167. The process seems unstoppable and it is assumed in the United States that there is more to come. Estimates suggest an increase in the state and federal prison population of one-quarter over 1995 levels by the year 2000. For certain groups of people, for example black men in the United States, the likelihood that they will grow up to be prisoners is now more certain than that they will grow up to be graduates. US government figures show that the lifetime likelihood of an American boy born in 1991 going to prison (exclud- ing imprisonment pre-trial or for a short sentence) is one in 23 for white boys, one in six for boys of Hispanic origin and more than one in every four for black boys. In Western Europe the growth is less extreme, but nonetheless significant. The low imprisonment rate in The Netherlands had for years been a source of wonder and admiration for penal and social reformers around the world. It was much studied and analysed. In 1975 in The Netherlands the number of prison cells was 2356 and the rate of imprisonment was 17 per 100 000, one of the lowest in the world. By 1994 prison capacity had risen to 8235 and the rate of imprisonment was 55 per 100 000. By the end of 1996 there were 12 000 prisoners and the imprisonment rate had reached nearly 80 per 100 000. In the rest of Western Europe the growth is less spectacular, but also large. In Spain in 1988 there were fewer than 30 000 people in prison. By 1994 the 3

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