NCJ Number
97118
Date Published
1985
Length
11 pages
Annotation
This bulletin presents year-end prison population statistics for 1984 for the United States, together with an examination of prison admissions for serious crimes between 1960 and 1984.
Abstract
Data show an increase of 6.1 percent over the 1983 count, for a 1984 year-end total of 463,866. Prison populations have grown 40 percent since 1980, with the largest increases in the West and Northeast. Statistics show that 93 percent of prisoners were State prisoners, 95.5 percent were male, and 96 percent were serving sentences of more than 1 year. The number of women inmates grew by 8.9 percent over 1983. Eight jurisdictions were under court order due to crowding, and 25 jurisdictions had 1 or more facilities under court order. The Nation's prisons were operating at an estimated 110 percent of capacity. Nearly 3 percent of prisoners were housed in local jails, and 17,000 inmates received early releases as a result of overcrowding. A comparison over time shows that admissions from courts for every 100 serious crimes reported to police declined from 6.3 in 1960 to 2.3 in 1970, and rose to 4.0 in 1980.