WASHINGTON – At yearend 2008, 7.3 million men and women were under correctional supervision, including 70 percent (about 5.1 million) who were supervised in the community on probation or parole and 30 percent (about 2.3 million) who were held in the custody of prisons or jails, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced today.
The correctional population increased by 0.5 percent during 2008, about a third of the average annual rate of growth since 2000 (1.6 percent), and the increase in the number under correctional supervision (33,900 offenders) was the smallest annual increase in the population since 2000.