Study says prison will overflow in 10 years

A new study predicts Iowa prisons will be overflowing in 10 years. Iowa’s prison population will grow by 62 percent over the next decade according to a forecast by the state’s Criminal and Juvenile Justice Planning division. That means over 12-thousand inmates would be in Iowa prisons by 2010 — and the prisons of today can’t house that many. The prediction is based on trends of the past five years. For example, the number of Iowa prison inmates with drug convictions rose about 150 percent in the past five years — and the drug dealers and users being sent to prison are getting longer sentences. There are over 76-hundred inmates in Iowa prisons today.