The figures are startling. In the last year of the Carter administration (1979), our nation's federal prisons held about 20,000 inmates. By contrast, as the Clinton administration draws to a close we will have 135,000 inmates in federal prisons; projecting an annual growth of 10 percent the number will reach a quarter million in five years. In 1979, there were 268,000 inmates in the prisons of all 50 states. Today, they hold almost 1.3 million. In 1979, there were 150,000 in local jails and lockups. Today, local jail facilities hold nearly 700,000. This year, we will exceed 2 million inmates in our prisons and jails. As we enter the millennium, the nation has about 6.5 million of its citizens under some form of correctional supervision.

And a new twist has been added: the "supermax" prison composed exclusively of cells used for solitary confinement. A place of studied sensual deprivation and psychological torture, it was designed by correctional managers to control their populations as privileges in routine prisons were diminished and sentences were lengthened. A product less of management necessity than of a twisted psyche, these temples to sado-masochism now dot the American landscape, presently containing 20,000 mostly minority inmates. Spurred on by a "drug war" that focuses inordinately upon the poor and minorities, we have seen astonishing patterns of incarceration among young black men vis-a-vis similarly accused white men. Although the rates of drug consumption are roughly equal among white and black populations, blacks are imprisoned for drug offenses at 14 times the rate of whites. The patterns in some states are truly astonishing. Between 1986 and 1996 for example, the rate of incarceration for drug offenses among African Americans increased by 10,102 percent in Louisiana; in Georgia, by 5,499 percent; in Arkansas 5,033 percent; in Iowa 4,284 percent; and in Tennessee 1,473 percent. There are currently more than 50 million criminal records on file in the US, with at least 4 to 5 million "new" adults acquiring such a record annually. This record sticks with a person, whether or not charges are dropped or there is a subsequent conviction. A notorious example occurred in the recent police killing of Patrick Dorismond, an unarmed young Haitian immigrant. In an attempt to rationalize the police behavior, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani characterized the deceased as "no altar boy" and released a "criminal record" that included two past convictions for "disorderly conduct" and a juvenile charge that had been dismissed over two decades earlier when Dorismond was 13 years old.

For certain racial and ethnic groups, being arrested and locked up is a given. Beginning in adolescence, we have established a warped "rite of passage" for young African Americans and Hispanics; only by a fluke will they avoid acquiring a "criminal record" -- the result of an arrest. In 1990, the nonprofit Washington, DC-based Sentencing Project found that on an average day, one in every four African-American men ages 20-29 was either in prison, in jail, or on probation/parole. Ten years later, the ratio had shrunk to one in three. Research conducted by the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives revealed that more than half of young black males living in Washington, DC, and Baltimore are caught up in the criminal justice system on an average day -- either in prison, jail, on probation or parole, out on bond, or being sought on a warrant.

Three of every four (76 percent) African-American 18-year-olds living in urban areas can now anticipate being arrested and jailed before age 36. In the process, each young man will acquire a "criminal record." By the late 1990s, federal statisticians were predicting that nearly one of every three adult black men in the nation could anticipate being sentenced to a federal or state prison at some time during his life. The most telling numbers of all are contained in a US Justice Department historical breakdown of admissions to state and federal prisons over the past century. Although African Americans were always over-represented (often for reasons unrelated to crime rates), the racial gap grew exponentially as we approached the millennium. In 1926, whites made up 79 percent of the inmates entering our state and federal prisons. Blacks made up 21 percent. By 1999 however, African Americans were making up between 55 percent and 60 percent of all new admissions to state and federal prisons. If Latino inmates are included, slightly over three out of four Americans sentenced to federal or state prisons were minorities.

This fact has brought a sea change in public attitudes regarding crime and criminals and ushered in the era of the "rhetorical wink," characterized by Lani Guinier, whereby a white politician can talk about getting tough on "criminals" and, with a wink, convey to the audience "black criminals." Race need never be mentioned. The uncomfortable truth is that the national attitude on crime is more firmly grounded in race than in putative crime rates. The surge in crime rates occurred between 1965 and 1973. The general trend since that time, with "blips" in 1989 and 1991, has been for crime to either remain stable or to decline. While most people assume jail overcrowding results from rising crime rates, increased violence, or general population growth, that is seldom the case. Here, in order of importance, are the major contributors to jail overcrowding: