US prisons held 405,000 as of end of September

State and federal prisons held more than 405,000 inmates as of last September , a 10 percent increase over the end of 1981, the Justice Department reports. Reporting figures for the third quarter of last year, the Bureau of Justice Statistics said the number of inmates rose 11,055, making a total of 405,371 prisoners on Sept. 30. The report said that since 1925, US population has grown at a rate of 1.2 percent a year, while the prison population has gone up at an average rate of 2.4 percent.