With this latest increase of nearly 60,000 prisoners, the United States may have matched or even surpassed Russia as the country with the highest rate of incarceration.

As of June 1999, prisons and jails held 1,860,520 people, according to a Bureau of Justice Statistics report. That's an increase of more than a million people since 1985, when the figure was less than 800,000.

Last year's total included more than 1.1 million state prisoners, about 606,000 men and women in local jails, and about 118,000 federal inmates. The rate of state and federal prison growth was 4.4 percent, the lowest since the 2.3 percent increase reported for 1979.

While the growth rate for state and local prisons declined last year, federal prisons continued to hold more people, adding more than 11,000 inmates.

''In the federal system, growth is being driven by drug law violators and immigration violators coming in,'' said statistician Allen J. Beck, author of the bureau report.

Beck said that if the current growth continues, the total prison population may reach 2 million by the end of next year.

Viewing the latest prison figures in light of the current US population, one of every 147 residents was an inmate in an adult jail or prison last year.

In Russia, one of every 146 people was behind bars in 1998, the last year for which figures were available, according to The Sentencing Project, a private group that advocates alternatives to prison. The proportion of prisoners has likely decreased because Russia had planned to release as many as 300,000 inmates by the end of 2000 to reduce chronic prison overcrowding.

The US prison population has grown for more than a quarter-century, helped by increased drug prosecutions and tougher policies against all offenders. Prisons usually hold convicted criminals sentenced to terms longer than one year.

Crime rates have been declining since 1993, but longer sentences, especially for drug crimes during the 1980s and for violent crimes in the 1990s, have driven prison populations, according to the report. More mandatory minimum sentences and less generous parole have also contributed to the increase.

Other findings of the report:

While the number of women in US prisons doubled since 1990 to more than 87,000 in 1999, men were 12 times more likely to find themselves behind bars.

Among black men in their 20s or early 30s, about 11 percent were in prison or jail. For the same age group, 4 percent of Hispanic men and 1.5 percent of white men were prisoners.

Copyright 2000 Associated Press

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