Heather C. West, Ph.D., Bureau of Justice Statistics

June 23, 2010    NCJ 230189

Presents data on prisoners under jurisdiction of federal or state correctional authorities on December 31, 2009, collected from the National Prisoner Statistics series. This report compares changes in the prison population during 2009 to changes from yearend 2000 through yearend 2008 and explores semi-annual growth trends in the prison population from yearend 2006 through yearend 2009.

Highlights:

• At yearend 2009, state and federal correctional authorities had jurisdiction over 1,613,656 prisoners, an increase of 0.2% (3,897 prisoners) from yearend 2008
• The number of prisoners under state jurisdiction declined by 2,941 prisoners (0.2%), the only decrease in the state prison population between 2000 and 2009; the federal prison population increased by 6,838 prisoners (3.4%) and accounted for all of the increase in the U.S. prison population.
• Twenty-four states reported decreases in their prison population during 2009, with a combined total decrease of 15,223 state prisoners; a total increase of 12,282 prisoners was reported in the remaining 26 states.

Part of the Prisoners Series

Press Release
Full report (PDF 149K)
ASCII file (12K)
Spreadsheets (Zip format 5K)

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