PROVIDENCE – The Rhode Island prison population decreased 14.5 percent from its peak in 2008 to 2015, according to a report from The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit criminal justice reform advocacy group.
The population count, which includes sentenced prisoners under the jurisdiction of state or federal correctional authorities, fell to 2,156. Rhode Island ranked no. 11 for the largest percent decrease of its prison population from its peak.
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According to the report, the prison population of the United States peaked in 2009, and between that time and 2015, it decreased 4.5 percent.
New Jersey had the highest percent decrease from its peak prison population, which occurred in 1999, with a 34.9 percent decrease to 20,489 sentenced prisoners (people in prison but not yet convicted of a crime are not counted in these statistics).
The report also said that 12 states had their prison populations peak in 2015. Of the 12, North Dakota experienced the highest percent increase in prison population, growing 20 percent since 2010.
The report was based on data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics between 1999 and-2015. The rankings assessed each states’ peak years for sentenced prisoner populations and measured their percent decline from that peak-year until 2015. States whose prison populations peaked in 2015 were measured over the course of 2010 to 2015.
Chris Bergenheim is the PBN web editor.
