rnative facilities for handling prisoners on probation outside of full time incarceration (Jones, 1990, May, p. 114; Leone, 1997, p. 132).
After an initial flush of enthusiasm, public support for such alternatives waned. As crime rates rose sharply in the 1980s, greater stress was placed on more vigorous law enforcement, the adoption of mandatory minimum sentencing laws for violent crimes, sex crimes and drug-related crimes (in 49 states and the federal government), longer sentences under three strikes laws for serious repeat felony offenders (in more than 25 states, the federal government and D.C.) and truth in sentencing (requiring prisoners to serve out most of their sentences). By 1990, only 17,079 out of 698,870 inmates in state prisons and jails participated in alternatives to imprisonment and straight probation (Leone, 1997, p. 132).
By the late 1980s, public interest in alternatives to full-time imprisonment attracted renewed interest largely because of the overcrowded condition of the nation's prisons, the high cost of imprisonment and the inadequacies of the traditional probation system. By the early 1990s, Pearson (1997) says the cost of maintaining inmates in some state prisons reached $35,000 per annum and the cost of constructing a single prison cell was approaching $70,000 (p. 140). According to Anderson (1998), spending on state prisons rose from $3.4 billion in 1980 to $15.7 billion in 1992 (p. 10). By 1996, 1,630,000 people were behind bars in state and federal prisons and jails, compared with 750,000 in 1985 (Alternatives, 1998, May, p. 1867). Between 1985 and 1995, the nation's incarcerated population grew 121 percent while the capacity of prisons and jails rose only 84 percent, resulting in serious overcrowding. The composition of the prison population also changed, reflecting largely increased numbers of people incarcerated on non-violent drug-related charges. In 1995, drug offenses accounted for 22.7 perce...