Inmates Serve Longer Sentences

Even though crime has been dropping this decade, tough sentencing laws are forcing criminals to serve longer prison sentences, a new Justice Department report shows.

Forty states have laws requiring inmates to serve 85 percent of their terms. The result is that prison populations have increased, thereby making corrections a growth industry.

Another factor contributing to high prison populations is that more of those arrested are now sentenced to prison. Consider murder. The number of arrests for murder has declined, but the rate at which offenders were sentenced rose to 613 per 1,000 arrests in 1996 from 460 per 1,000 arrests in 1990.