prison population

More than half of New Jersey inmates enter the system with a substance abuse problem. The state will reopen a closed prison as a drug treatment center.

New Jersey's prison population has been reduced by 31 percent during a 15-year period, the biggest drop in the nation.

An error by Washington state's Department of Corrections that resulted in wrongly calculated sentences for about 3 percent of the prison population led to the early release of more than 3,000 prisoners in the state since 2002.

While big-city jails get most of the attention, lockups in small and medium-sized counties have actually driven the overall explosion in the U.S. inmate population, according to a new analysis of 45 years of jail statistics.

The number of inmates in state prisons is on the decline, which is right in line with a national trend. In the United States, the prison population dropped for a third straight year in 2012.