NEW YORK (AP) - A new report says the number of people in state prisons has dropped for the first time since 1972.
The overall drop was just 0.4 percent, but the Pew Center on the States report suggests there could be a sustained downward trend as policymakers try to cut corrections costs.
The director of the Pew Center's Public Safety Performance Project say "the political and policy environment has changed drastically." Adam Gelb says both Republicans and Democrats are realizing that there are other strategies to protect public safety and hold offenders accountable that don't involve putting more public dollars into prisons.
According to official state data, there were more than 1.4 million inmates in state prisons as of January 1. That was down more than 5,700 from a year earlier. California and Michigan saw the biggest drops.
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
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