State prison population rose 5.3 percent last year

[IndianaGreen]

From IndyStar: http://www.indystar.com/article/20100317/NEWS02/3170335/-1/ARCHIVE/Jump-in-inmates-is-biggest-in-U.S.

Jump in inmates is biggest in U.S.

State prison population rose 5.3 percent last year

By Jon Murray

Posted: March 17, 2010

For the first time since 1972, the number of inmates in state prisons in the U.S. has dropped. No thanks to Indiana.

Last year, the prison population dipped in 27 states, and a new report to be released today says that drove an overall decrease of 0.4 percent.

But in Indiana, the prison population last year swelled by 5.3 percent, the largest percentage increase of any state in the nation.

What's different about Indiana? Prison officials and experts say many other states have more aggressively reformed sentencing and pursued alternatives to prison incarceration -- often under pressure to slash gargantuan prison budgets, especially during the recession.

"When you're in the number one spot, it says that something is out of whack," said Adam Gelb, director of the Pew Center's Public Safety Performance Project, which conducted the study.

"It does cry out for a deeper look at why Indiana is leading the nation in growth," he said, "and what strategies could be employed to bend the curve, while continuing to protect public safety."

One factor that drives incarceration in Indiana is get-tough sentence enhancements, which even some legislators agree have snowballed to fill Indiana's adult male prisons nearly to capacity.

"They've created a time bomb over the last 10 to 20 years," said Larry Landis, executive director of the Indiana Public Defender Council. "Our problem is that we're addicted to incarceration."

Indiana's violent crime rate dropped by a third from 1994 to 2007, but the state's prison population grew more than 4 percent a year during the 2000s, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Indiana Department of Correction projections forecast a nearly 25 percent increase in its inmate population through 2015, when the inmate population could top 36,000.

The Pew study pegged it at just less than 30,000, adults and juveniles, at the start of this year.