The Nation - News from Feb. 6, 1989

State courts convicted about 583,000 felons in 1986, a new analysis by the Bureau of Justice Statistics said. The analysis, for the first time providing data on state court felony activity, found that about 46% of those convicted that year were sent to a state prison and another 21% to a local jail. A spokesman for the bureau, part of the Justice Department’s Office of Justice Programs, said the last nationwide prison count showed there were 604,824 state and federal prisoners as of June 30, 1988, an increase of 23,240 over the number six months earlier. If that trend continued, the nation would need 900 new prison beds every week, said the spokesman. The analysis, based on data from 100 counties throughout the country, found that state courts accounted for about 95% of all felony convictions.