The Pew Center on the States released a study on the state of the United States prison system that found that 1 out of 100 adults in the country are incarcerated.

According to the report, titled “One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008,” the state of Iowa spent 5.9 percent of its budget – about $313 million – on state corrections spending in 2007. Additionally, Iowa’s prison population has risen 6.1 percent since December 2006.

However, Fred Scaletta, public information officer for the Iowa Department of Corrections, said the report contained some inaccuracies.

“There’s some information in there that’s not correct. We got the report the night before it came out, but it was too late for them to change,” Scaletta said.

According to the press release from the Department of Corrections, “the Pew Report count for January 1, 2008, reports a count of 9,419, which includes work-release and OWI offenders supervised by community-based corrections. The actual prison count was 8,692 plus 40 inmates held in other states, for a total of 8,732.”

Scaletta said this means Iowa’s prison population decreased about 1.6 percent, instead of increasing 6.1 percent, as the report concluded.

He said the other information contained in the report was very useful, however.

For every dollar spent on higher education, 38 cents was spent on corrections, putting Iowa in the bottom 12 states in this measure. Vermont, Michigan and Oregon are the top three.

A Pew Center employee, who asked not to be identified, said that five states were spending more on corrections than they were on higher education, and that Iowa has done well in investing in community corrections.

“As a state, we applaud what Iowa’s able to do,” the employee said.

Bob Brammer, spokesperson for the Iowa Office of the Attorney General, said wise spending is part of the reason Iowa’s prison population is low.

“Unfortunately, funds are very tight in Iowa in terms of appropriations, but we think that it’s money well spent,” Brammer said.

According to the report, at the beginning of 2008 there were approximately 2,319,258 people incarcerated in the United States. The current adult population estimate is 229,787,080 people, which means 1 person in 99.1 is in jail or prison.

The spokesperson from the Pew Center said there is not a “huge wave in reform coming down,” but states such as Texas and Kansas are changing their legislation to meet the rising population problem.

He said that Texas, instead of building new prisons, has focused on building “short-term residential and treatment centers, and this is projected to save the state $210 million a year.”

According to the Iowa Department of Corrections, there are nine prisons in Iowa. All nine are overcrowded.

“This is not just about prison populations,” the spokesperson for the Pew Center said. “It’s about bills that are due in states – they are realizing that corrections is taking up a larger and larger share of their general budget spending.”

In the news release from the Pew Center, Adam Gelb, director of Pew’s Public Safety Performance Project, said that “for all the money spent on corrections today, there hasn’t been a clear and convincing return for public safety.”