Source: Reuter

U.S. scrambles to build prisons

WASHINGTON (Reuter) With about one million convicts,
prison officials are scrambling to add enough beds to house the
nation's burgeoning prison population.
Between 1990 and 1995, state and federal officials built 213
new prisons, boosting capacity by 41 percent, the Justice
Department said Thursday.
Still, during 1995 federal prisons held 24 percent more
inmates than their rated capacity, while state prisons were 3
percent overfilled.
As of mid1995, there were 1,500 state and federal prisons
with a capacity of 976,000 beds, a 41 percent increase in
capacity over five years, according to the ``Census of State and
Federal Correctional Facilities'' published by the Bureau of
Justice Statistics.
Over the same period, however, the nation's prison
population posted a dramatic 43 percent increase to about one
million people. About one out of every 200 was under age 18.
In 1995, one in four state correctional facilities was under
a court order or consent decree to limit population or address
specific confinement conditions. But the number ordered by
courts to limit their populations declined from 183 in 1990 to
174.
More than 94 percent of prisons operated inmate work
programs, and 80 percent offered high schoollevel educational
programs. About one in four prisoners enrolled in the school
programs. About 70 percent of prisons offered psychological or
psychiatric inmate counseling.