The U.S. penal system, the world's largest, maintained its steady growth in 2004, the Department of Justice reported Sunday. The latest official half-yearly figures found the nation's prison and jail population at 2,131,180 in the middle of last year, an increase of 2.3 percent over 2003. The United States has incarcerated 726 people per 100,000 of its population, seven to 10 times as many as most other democracies. The rate for England is 142 per 100,000, for France 91 and for Japan 58. The figures issued by the department's statistical unit showed that 12.6 percent of black males in their late twenties were behind bars. The comparable rate for Hispanic males was 3.6 percent and for whites 1.7 percent. "Unless we promote alternatives to prison, the nation will continue to lead the world in imprisonment," said Jason Ziedenberg, executive director of the Justice Policy Institute, a think-tank that studies prison issues. Reuters quoted the Justice Department as saying that violent crime in the United States fell by over 33 percent from 1994 to 2003 and property crimes fell by 23 percent. Yet the prison population has continued to climb, increasing an annual average of 3.5 percent since 1995, partly due to high recidivism. Within three years of their release, two of every three prisoners are back behind bars.
