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"If recent incarceration rates remain unchanged, an estimated 1 of every 20 persons (5.1%) will serve time in a prison during their lifetime."
The above statement was taken from the Bureau of Justice Statistics homepage. Below are general offender statistics compiled by the BJS.
Lifetime likelihood of going to State or Federal prison
If recent incarceration rates remain unchanged, an estimated 1 of every 20 persons (5.1%) will serve time in a prison during their lifetime.
Lifetime chances of a person going to prison are higher for
-- men (9%) than for women (1.1%)
-- blacks (16.2%) and Hispanics (9.4%) than for whites (2.5%)
Based on current rates of first incarceration, an estimated 28% of black males will enter State or Federal prison during their lifetime, compared to 16% of Hispanic males and 4.4% of white males.
Characteristics of State Prison inmates
Women were 5% of the State prison inmates in 1991, up from 4% in 1986.
Sixty-five percent of prison inmates belonged to racial or ethnic minorities in 1991, up from 60% in 1986.
Sixty-eight percent of inmates were under age 35 in 1991, down from 73% in 1986.
About 4% of State prison inmates were not U.S. citizens.
Altogether, 59% of inmates had a high school diploma or its equivalent.
Two-thirds of inmates were employed during the month before they were arrested for their current offense; over half were employed full time.
Among the State prison inmates in 1991:
-- fewer than half were sentenced for a violent crime
-- a fourth were sentenced for a property crime
-- about a fifth were sentenced for a drug crime
Characteristics of jail inmates
Women were 10% of the local jail inmates in 1996, unchanged from 1989.
Forty-eight percent of jailed women reported having been physically or sexually abused prior to admission; 27% had been raped.
Sixty-three percent of jail inmates belonged to racial or ethnic minorities in 1996, up slightly from 61% in 1989.
Twenty-four percent of jail inmates were between the ages of 35 and 44 in 1996, up from 17% in 1989.
Over a third of all inmates reported some physical or mental disability
About 8% of local jail inmates were not U.S. citizens.
Altogether, 54% of inmates had a high school diploma or its equivalent.
Thirty-six of all inmates were not employed during the month before they were arrested for their current offense -- 20% were looking for work; 16% were not looking.
Among the local jail inmates in 1996:
-- a fourth were held for a violent crime
-- a fourth were held for a property crime
-- about a fifth were held for a drug crime
More than 7 of every 10 jail inmates had prior sentences to probation or incarceration.
A quarter of the jail inmates said they had been treated at some time for a mental or emotional problem.
Comparing Federal and State prison inmates
In 1991, Federal inmates were more likely than State inmates to be
-- women (8% vs. 5%)
-- Hispanic (28% vs. 17%)
-- age 45 or older (22% vs. 10%)
-- with some college education (28% vs. 12%)
-- noncitizens (18% vs. 4%)
-- employed prior to their arrest (74% vs. 67%)
An estimated 58% of Federal inmates in 1991 and 21% of State inmates were serving a sentence for a drug offense; about 17% of Federal inmates and 47% of State inmates were in prison for a violent offense.
On average, Federal inmates were expected to serve almost 6 ½ years on a sentence of almost 10 ½ years, and State inmates, 5 ½ years on a sentence of 12 ½ years.
Recidivism
Of the 108,580 persons released from prisons in 11 States in 1983, an estimated 62.5% were rearrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within 3 years, 46.8% were reconvicted, and 41.4% returned to prison or jail.
Sex offenders
On a given day in 1994 there were approximately 234,000 offenders convicted of rape or sexual assault under the care, custody, or control of corrections agencies; nearly 60% of these sex offenders are under conditional supervision in the community.
The median age of the victims of imprisoned sexual assaulters was less than 13 years old; the median age of rape victims was about 22 years.
An estimated 24% of those serving time for rape and 19% of those serving time for sexual assault had been on probation or parole at the time of the offense for which they were in State prison in 1991.
Child victimizers
Offenders who had victimized a child were on average 5 years older than the violent offenders who had committed their crimes against adults. Nearly 25% of child victimizers were age 40 or older, but about 10% of the inmates with adult victims fell in that age range.
Intimate victimizers
About 4 in 10 inmates serving time in jail for intimate violence had a criminal justice status -- on probation or parole or under a restraining order -- at the time of the violent attack on an intimate.
About 1 in 4 convicted violent offenders confined in local jails had committed their crime against an intimate; about 7% of State prisoners serving time for violence had an intimate victim.
About half of all offenders convicted of intimate violence and confined in a local jail or a State prison had been drinking at the time of the offense. Jail inmates who had been drinking prior to the intimate violence consumed an average amount of ethanol equivalent to 10 beers.
About 8 in 10 inmates serving time in State prison for intimate violence had injured or killed their victim.
Use of alcohol by convicted offenders
Among the 5.3 million convicted offenders under the jurisdiction of corrections agencies in 1996, nearly 2 million, or about 36%, were estimated to have been drinking at the time of the offense. The vast majority, about 1.5 million, of these alcohol-involved offenders were sentenced to supervision in the community: 1.3 million on probation and more than 200,000 on parole.
Alcohol use at the time of the offense was commonly found among those convicted of public-order crimes, a type of offense most highly represented among those on probation and in jail. Among violent offenders, 41% of probationers, 41 of those in local jails, 38% of those in State prisons, and 20% of those in Federal prisons were estimated to have been drinking when they committed the crime.
Women offenders
In 1998 there were an estimated 3.2 million arrests of women, accounting for 22% of all arrests that year.
Based on self-reports of victims of violence, women account for 14% of violent offenders, an annual average of about 2.1 million violent female offenders.
Women accounted for about 16% of all felons convicted in State courts in 1996: 8% of convicted violent felons, 23% of property felons, and 17% of drug felons.
In 1998 more than 950,000 women were under correctional supervision, about 1% of the U.S. female population.
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