Acknowledgements The Office of Criminal Justice Plans and Analysis gratefully acknowledges the assistance and contributions of the directors and staff of the Pretrial Services Agency, Department of Corrections, and the District of Columbia Office of Planning. Introduction Across the nation, states are experiencing dramatic increases in their jail and prison population. Currently, there are more than one-half million people incarcerated in this country. The District's average daily total prison population increased from 4,614 in 1979 to 8,368 in 1985, representing an 81 percent increase. This surging prison population has forced many state and local governments to construct additional prisons and to expand prison programs. As states and cities make plans to handle the growing inmate population, many questions about that population arise. Some of these questions are: 1. What are the ages and gender of the inmate population; 2. What are their criminal histories; 3. How many use illicit drugs; 4. What are their educational backgrounds; and 5. Where do they come from? To answer these and other questions about the District's inmate population, a comprehensive analysis of that population was done. Some of the findings of that analysis comprise the following report. Background In 1985 the average daily population of District prisoners housed at D.C. Jail, Lorton Prison, local halfway houses and in federal prisons was 8,368. The annual average daily population for Lorton Prison alone was 4,299. With an inmate population of this magnitude, and the corollary need to expand the number of prison and community-based spaces for servicing this growing population, it is imperative that we have pertinent information about the prison population. Effective planning and program development require a solid information base about the inmates themselves. One of the most relevant factors to be considered in developing programs for prisoners is their criminal history background. Also of major significance are their social and demographic characteristics. The purpose of the current study is to obtain more detailed information about the criminal background, educational history, and socio-demographic characteristics of the District's inmate population. Information about persons arrested and incarcerated in the District of Columbia is gathered at several points in the criminal justice process and maintained by several agencies. However, no one agency in the District maintains a complete criminal history file on all persons arrested and incarcerated. Because there is currently no central criminal history repository for the District, criminal history information must be gathered from several sources. Prior to a determination of the pretrial status of a defendant, the District's Pretrial Services Agency, utilizing computer terminals, accesses the automated files maintainted by Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) and D.C. Superior Court (and in some cases conducts manual review of court records) to compile criminal history information on that defendant. Largely absent from the automated files is information pertaining to juvenile arrests and convictions. Besides criminal history information, the Pretrial Services Agency (as well as MPD, Courts, Corrections) gathers data encompassing a range of sociodemographic characteristics. However, some informa tion, such as schools attended and last grade completed, is often not collected and, therefore, unavailable. Efforts to compile a complete profile for inmates serving time in District facilities are hampered because there is no sole source for the information, and some items such as schools attended can only be determined by reviewing manual records maintained at each correctional facility. Therefore, a plan was developed to compile a sociodemographic and criminal history profile of all inmates serving time at Lorton Prison and at halfway houses by obtaining data from several different sources. The prison population is dynamic, with movement into and out of the system occurring constantly as sentences are imposed and expire. The population examined for compiling the criminal history aspect of this study consisted of all sentenced prisoners at local facilities on March 19, 1986, totalling 5,791. The population examined for compiling educational and other socio-demographic information consisted of sentenced prisoners at local facilities for the week of March 31 through April 4, 1986, totalling about 5,000 inmates. For the most part, the same individuals were included in both time periods. Criminal history information was compiled from automated files, and educational and sociodemographic information was obtained from manual files. Inmate crimes for which inmates were convicted were assigned to one of eleven categories (e.g. robbery to felony violent crime) to facilitate data analysis and presentation of the findings. All data were entered into micro-computers for analysis. The data base is quite extensive and lends itself to a wide range of analysis. Criminal history variables may be analyzed within the context of the inmate's last known address (by city, ward, and census tract) and schools attended. Additionally, relationships may be examined between criminal history variables such as possession or sale of drugs and number of prior convictions. The following tables and narrative descriptions highlight some of the major findings from this recent detailed analysis of the District's prison population. |