One in 37 US adults ‘has been in prison’
The 5.6 million people with "prison experience" represented about 2.7% of the adult population of 210 million as of December 31, 2001, the report found. The study by the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics looked at people who served a criminal sentence in state or federal prison, not those temporarily held in jail.
Last month, the bureau reported that a record 2.1m people were in federal, state or local custody at the end of 2002.
Between 1974 and 2001, the number of current and former inmates rose by 3.8m, the study found. Of those, 2.7m were former inmates.
Experts say the growing numbers of ex-prisoners means more people in society have difficulty finding jobs because they have felony convictions. Many cannot vote and they are more likely to have family or emotional problems which exact a toll on state and local government budgets.
"We're talking about a large number of people bigger than a lot of countries in Western Europe who face the barriers that exist when you have been in the correctional system," said Jason Zeidenberg of the Justice Policy Institute, which advocates alternatives to imprisonment.
The number of people sent to prison for the first time tripled from 1974 to 2001 as sentences got tougher, especially for drug offences
Prison experiences vary greatly by gender and ethnic origin.
Almost 5% of men in 2001 had done prison time, compared with less than 1% of women. Almost 17% of black men in 2001 had prison experience, compared with 7.7% of Hispanic and 2.6% of white men. The percentage of black women with prison time was 1.7%, compared with less than 1% of Hispanic and white women.
People aged between 35 and 44 had the highest rates of lifetime incarceration, at 6.5% for men and almost 1% for women.
The study projects that by 2010, about 3.4% of adults 7.7m people will have served time in prison.
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