Growth of Prison Population Slows in 2008

Although the US prison population is still growing the Department of Justice released figures that shows that the rate of growth slowed in 2008. The total number of people in prison and jail amounts to 2.3 million. That is 1 out of every 133 adults who was behind bars as of last year. These figures are high but the rate of growth has slowed:

The prison population grew less than 1 percent last year. The previous decade saw the inmate population grow by an annual average of more than 6 percent.

This can mainly be attributed to states forced to cut prison costs in hard economic times. Read more here.