Released on January 5, this new study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) reports a rise in the proportion of state inmates who used drugs (including alcohol) in the month before their arrest and an increase in use by federal inmates within prisons between 1990 and 1997. In the same period, the proportion of state inmates receiving drug abuse treatment fell from 24.5% in 1991 to 9.7% in 1997, and the numbers of inmates in treatment in federal prisons fell from 15.7% to 9.2%. Analysts attribute these figures to both a new awareness by police and the court system towards offender drug use and the exploding prison population, which has doubled since it reached 1.8 million in 1980. Available in .pdf or ASCII format, the report contains data tables on "prior alcohol and drug abuse by type of drug, type of offense, severity of prior substance abuse, and other offender characteristics," as well as the types of treatment and programs in prisons. A press release, spreadsheets in .zip format, and related data sets are also available.
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