A state analyst confirmed Tuesday that the proportion of blacks being sent to prison is worsening again. Blacks account for 24.3 percent of all new Iowa prison admissions in fiscal year 2009.  The percentage of prisoners incarcerated for drug crimes who are black is 28.4 percent in the current fiscal year, which ends June 30. That’s the highest level since 1996 …

Tuesday’s news was discouraging for drug policy officials and black leaders in Iowa, where disproportionate minority confinement has been a problem for at least the last 25 years.The new findings come as Iowa’s long-growing prison population is leveling off, in part because new prison admissions for drug-related crimes are declining for the fifth straight year.   “If drug offenses are on the decline in general, you have to wonder why that is” that the percentage of blacks being admitted to Iowa’s prisons is rising, said state Rep. Deborah Berry, D-Waterloo. “I certainly want to find out more” …

A state law that passed in 2005 greatly altered Iowa’s prison admissions. From 2000 to 2004, the numbers of whites behind bars had shot up substantially. But the new law restricted sales of the cold medicine used to make methamphetamine, and subsequently led to a sharp decline in arrests of meth makers, who were primarily white.   “Now that the meth manufacturing has dropped, the African-American percentage is rising again,” said Phyllis Blood, an analyst who tracks the prison population for Iowa’s Division of Criminal and Juvenile Justice Planning. “Not necessarily as much in raw numbers, but as a percentage of the total prison population.”

In fiscal year 2009, 2,212 people have been admitted to Iowa prisons. Of those, 1,603 were white and 537 were black, state figures show.  Blacks made up 2.6 percent of Iowa’s population in 2007, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

The article in the Des Moines Register has more detail and background.

The study, by the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit policy research group in Washington, found that the number of blacks in state prisons for drug crimes dropped 21.6 percent from 1999 to 2005, the last year for which data are available. The number of white drug offenders in state prisons grew by 42.6 percent in the same period.  The total number of drug offenders in state prisons increased to 253,300 in 2005 from 251,200 in 1999, according to the report.

Experts in criminal justice suggested several reasons for the decline in imprisoned black drug offenders, including a reduction in racial profiling, a drop in open-air drug sales and a cooling of the crack cocaine trade that devastated urban communities throughout the 1980s and ’90s.

The study, which was based on an analysis of data from the F.B.I. and other federal agencies, noted a sharp contrast between state and federal prisons, where there was an overall expansion of inmates — black, white and Latino — serving time for drug-related offenses.   Blacks continued to make up the largest segment — 44 percent — of all prisoners serving time for drug offenses, although they were only 12 percent of the total population, while whites, who were 75 percent of the national population, made up 27 percent of all imprisoned drug offenders. The incarceration rate for Latino drug offenders in state prisons was substantially unchanged, 20.2 percent in 2005, down from 20.7 percent in 1999.

There is a lot more data available from the article in the New York Times.

States spend seven times more money on prisons than on probation and parole, even though the vast majority of the 7.3 million adults now under correctional supervision are not behind bars, according to the first detailed survey of state corrections spending since 2002.   Counting offenders on probation and parole, one in 31 U.S. adults is under some form of correctional supervision, including incarceration, according to the study.

The new report focuses on the more than 5 million adults under probation or parole supervision, either because their crimes did not warrant incarceration or because they have been released after serving time. States, the Pew study contends, devote a disproportionately small amount of funding to the management of these offenders, when compared with what they spend on criminals currently behind bars — even taking into consideration the far greater costs of operating prisons … The 34 states that provided complete spending data for the study collectively poured $18.65 billion into prisons in fiscal 2008, while spending just $2.53 billion on probation and parole programs — a ratio of more than seven to one, the report found. The average daily cost of supervising someone on probation was $3.42 in fiscal 2008, the study said, compared with $78.95 for the cost of incarcerating an inmate.

In a new report that captures how federal sentencing caseloads have changed over the last 17 years, the U.S. Sentencing Commission found the rate of offenders sentenced to federal prison time has increased while alternative sentencing (probation, probation with confinement) has declined. A partial reason for the drop in alternative sentences is that a significant number of offenders (37.4 percent) are non-citizens and mostly illegal foreign nationals.

Other Findings:

• In fiscal year 2007, 81.1 percent of sentences imposed on citizens involved prison time, probation (8.4 percent), probation with confinement (5.8 percent), prison split with community confinement (4.7 percent);
• For citizens, the average prison sentence was 76 months, offenders sentenced to a prison/community split received an average of 9 months, the average probation only sentence was 33 months, and offenders sentenced to probation with confinement was 39 months;
• Offenders with higher levels of education are more likely than less educated offenders to receive an alternative sentence.

Though the growth in US prison populations over the past three decades-from 300,000 inmates in the 1970s to 1.6 million today-is well known, its causes are not. This paper examines one potential source of growth that has received surprisingly little rigorous attention: changes in time actually served in prison. Using offender-level data from the National Corrections Reporting Program, this paper demonstrates that median and 75th percentile times to release have not risen dramatically, and have even declined in some jurisdictions-although some of the decline appears to be caused by states increasingly incarcerating minor offenders who may not have been admitted in earlier years. In general, the results indicate that changes in admissions practices, rather than time served following admission, have played the dominant role in prison population growth. This paper also examines how offender-level traits have shaped the probability of release. The young, the Hispanic, and the violent are less likely to be released in any given period, and those over forty more likely to be so. Blacks, women, and property and drug offenders are no less likely to be released than their counterparts.

The full paper can be downloaded from the SSRN site.

From California to Connecticut, states are under mounting pressure to bring corrections spending in line with the reality of gaping budget shortfalls.  Legislators in some states are slashing prisoner rehabilitation programmes, releasing inmates early or packing them more tightly into crowded facilities to save money. Others are using technology, such as satellite tracking, to monitor sex offenders, drunken drivers and other criminals instead of keeping them behind bars. To avoid building new prisons, many states ship inmates to private facilities that often are thousands of miles away. Other states are exploring long-term strategies aimed at preventing recidivism, a leading factor behind overcrowded prisons and jails – and rising costs …

“We’re at a crossroads. I think there is an acknowledgment that if we continue the status quo, we’re going to continue to have a prison population that increases to untenable levels,” said Ryan S King, a policy analyst with The Sentencing Project, which lobbies for changes in sentencing laws as a way to reduce incarceration rates …

Nationally, corrections trails only healthcare, education and transportation in consuming state dollars. Prison spending increased 127% from 1987 to 2007, and at least five states – Connecticut, Delaware, Michigan, Oregon and Vermont – now spend as much or more on corrections as they do on higher education, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers and the Public Safety Performance Project … Criminal justice reform – for years a controversial issue for legislators wary of being labelled “soft on crime” – is finding new proponents as public officials seek ways to save money. But a single strategy to tackle incarceration costs has yet to emerge, and some critics say state policymakers are dragging their feet and avoiding comprehensive changes that have become necessary … “We’re talking about huge, huge issues, and they’re all the way back at the starting line, quibbling about the rules of the race,” [said Ryan King].

An interesting view from outside.

On a ten-point scale, officer quality and morale came in with a remarkable 9.2 weighted mean score. Other “high priority” issues include lack of mental and medical health professionals (7.9), security and violence within the facilities (7.7), shrinking budgets (7.7), lack of transition and rehabilitation services (7.7), inmate health (7.7), and food and facilities management (7.2). The findings were delivered during the ACA August meeting in New Orleans and reaffirm the industry’s commitment to developing the corrections’ workforce to better manage the country’s ever-increasing inmate population … More than 80 percent of the 205 respondents to the 2007 online survey serve as jail administrators or wardens managing facilities with an average size of 763 inmate beds. Two-thirds represented either city or county jails while one-third reported from state prison systems.

More from the release at WebWire.

Drawing data from a variety of sources that looked at prison and general populations, Becky Pettit, a UW associate professor of sociology, and Bryan Sykes, a UW post-doctoral researcher, found that the boom in prison population is hiding lowered rates of fertility and increased rates of involuntary migration to rural areas and morbidity that is marked by a greater exposure to and risk of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV or AIDS. These effects are most heavily felt by low-skill black males, and she said the disproportionately high incarceration rates among African-Americans suggest the prison system is a key suspect in these demographic results.

Among the findings:

• Rates of positive or latent tuberculosis are 50 percent to 100 percent higher for inmates than for the general population. The TB rate among black inmates is 14.6 percent compared to 8.4 percent for white inmates. Despite substantial declines in the overall risk for TB in the U.S., blacks are eight times more likely to contract the disease than whites.

• Blacks both inside and out of prison have higher rates of HIV infection than whites. Inmate rates for HIV are 3.5 percent for blacks and 2.3 percent for whites, although Pettit said this data is weak because many inmates have not been tested for HIV or will not say if they are HIV positive.

• The number of black men living in rural, or non-metropolitan, areas increases dramatically when the inmate population is included because many jails and prisons are located in rural locations.

• Rates of childlessness are higher for both black and white inmates than the general population. Sixty-four percent of non-prison white men have children, but that number drops to 50.6 percent of jailed white men. Among blacks, 71.7 percent of the non-prison men have children while 61.7 percent of those in jail are fathers.

Pettit said she hopes her work can be a springboard for better and more inclusive data collection that paints a more accurate demographic picture of the U.S. population. “We usually don’t think of the prison system as something that is a policy shift. But the public health risks and the effects on migration and fertility show that it has had fundamental consequences for all of us,” she said.

They do look luxurious, but I think I’ll choose house arrest instead.