Serious Overcrowding of Local Jails Is Documented in Government Report
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WASHINGTON — Jail population jumped 23% to 274,400 in the three-year-span ending June 30, 1986, the government said Sunday in a report that outlines serious overcrowding in the nation’s local jails.
The occupancy rate in the nation’s large local jail systems last year was running 8% ahead of rated capacity, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported.
As of the middle of 1986, nearly one in every four jails in systems containing more than 100 prisoners was under court order to reduce the number of inmates it housed, the bureau found.
A total of 166 jails were under court order to improve conditions of confinement, with 86% of them cited for crowded living units.
Increasingly, local jails are being used to take some of the spillover from crowded state prison systems.
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