News Intro Text
[The Washington Post, December 3, 2014]
Date
News Item Content
<p>[The Washington Post, December 3, 2014]</p>
<p>By Niraj Chokshi</p>
<p>It’s no big secret that the state prison system is over-taxed.</p>
<p>Prisons in 17 states are over capacity and, despite shrinking for a few years, it looks as if the prison population will return to its long-term trend toward growth, as we reported a few weeks ago:</p>
<p>Since the late 1970s, the state prison population essentially knew only one direction: up. But, in 2009, something changed. After all those years of growth, the prison population begin to shrink. And the trend held steady — well, until last year, when growth made a comeback. Now, it seems, it may be here to stay.</p>
<p>The state prison population is poised to grow 3 percent by 2018, according to a Pew Charitable Trusts review of 34 state and outside group projections. Were the forecast accurate, it would suggest the old trend — decades of growth — may be back. Overall, that group is projected to swell by about 26,000 reaching nearly 945,000 in size four years from now, according to the data Pew collected last month and published Tuesday.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’s Nick Kasprak, Michael Mitchell, and Rob Cady published the interactive map below that shows just how much the imprisonment rate has swelled in each state: there isn’t a single one that hasn’t seen substantial growth.</p>
<p>North Carolina saw its imprisonment rate per 100,000 residents grow the least: 66 percent from 1978 to 2013. North Dakota’s grew the most, increasing nearly tenfold. Imprisonment rates more than tripled in 36 states.</p>
<p>Part of the reason behind North Dakota’s huge growth is that it started at the very bottom among states in 1978 with an imprisonment rate of just 21 per 100,000 residents. In 2013, Louisiana’s rate was largest, at 847 per 100,000 residents. In 44 states, the 2013 imprisonment rate was above the highest rate (234 per 100,000 residents in South Carolina) in 1978.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/12/03/the-four-decade-rise-in-state-imprisonment-in-one-animated-gif/">To view interactive GIF on Washington Post's website >>></a></p>
<p>By Niraj Chokshi</p>
<p>It’s no big secret that the state prison system is over-taxed.</p>
<p>Prisons in 17 states are over capacity and, despite shrinking for a few years, it looks as if the prison population will return to its long-term trend toward growth, as we reported a few weeks ago:</p>
<p>Since the late 1970s, the state prison population essentially knew only one direction: up. But, in 2009, something changed. After all those years of growth, the prison population begin to shrink. And the trend held steady — well, until last year, when growth made a comeback. Now, it seems, it may be here to stay.</p>
<p>The state prison population is poised to grow 3 percent by 2018, according to a Pew Charitable Trusts review of 34 state and outside group projections. Were the forecast accurate, it would suggest the old trend — decades of growth — may be back. Overall, that group is projected to swell by about 26,000 reaching nearly 945,000 in size four years from now, according to the data Pew collected last month and published Tuesday.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’s Nick Kasprak, Michael Mitchell, and Rob Cady published the interactive map below that shows just how much the imprisonment rate has swelled in each state: there isn’t a single one that hasn’t seen substantial growth.</p>
<p>North Carolina saw its imprisonment rate per 100,000 residents grow the least: 66 percent from 1978 to 2013. North Dakota’s grew the most, increasing nearly tenfold. Imprisonment rates more than tripled in 36 states.</p>
<p>Part of the reason behind North Dakota’s huge growth is that it started at the very bottom among states in 1978 with an imprisonment rate of just 21 per 100,000 residents. In 2013, Louisiana’s rate was largest, at 847 per 100,000 residents. In 44 states, the 2013 imprisonment rate was above the highest rate (234 per 100,000 residents in South Carolina) in 1978.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/12/03/the-four-decade-rise-in-state-imprisonment-in-one-animated-gif/">To view interactive GIF on Washington Post's website >>></a></p>