• PRISON PROBLEM DEBATED SOME CANDIDATES WANT STRICT - AND COSTLY - SENTENCE LAW CHANGED; Ed Penhale, P-I Reporter. Seattle Post - Intelligencer. Seattle, Wash.: Sep 8, 1992. pg. b.1
• SOARING COSTS OF STATE PRISONS; Seattle Post - Intelligencer. Seattle, Wash.: Jul 30, 1992. pg. a.14:  "State Director of Corrections Chase Riveland has raised an important public policy issue regarding Washington's heavily burdened prison system. It cries out for discussion by candidates for governor and the Legislature in this fall's elections. The state's prison population last month soared to more than 10,000 inmates, an all-time high, and the incarceration rate is expected to continue its steep climb in coming years. Most prison facilities are jammed beyond planned capacities with some prisoners sleeping on the floors of crowded cells. New facilities are being built at a record pace at a cost this biennium of $400 million. At the present rate of incarceration, it's estimated that 1,000 new prison beds will be needed every 18 months, accompanied by operating costs that are rising by $125 million annually."
• TOUGH CRIME LAWS PACK STATE PRISONS BUDGET CAN'T KEEP PACE WITH PRISON GROWTH; Ed Penhale, P-I Reporter. Seattle Post - Intelligencer. Seattle, Wash.: Jul 29, 1992. pg. a.1   "The state prison system is growing rapidly to keep up with law-and-order legislation passed in recent years, but the lock 'em up approach to crime prevention is costing more than it's worth. So says state Corrections Department Secretary Chase Riveland, who thinks state lawmakers need "political permission" from the public to start finding ways to hold down the size of the prison population. Unless that happens, the corrections system will devour state coffers in the years ahead."

Incarceration rates differ significantly by race: "Washington Incarceration rates, June 30, 2006"
From: Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2005
Number of people in jail per 100,000 people in Washington's adult population

Rate for total state population	White	Black	Hispanic
465	393	2,522	527

As of September 2007, Washington State had 15,574 people in state prisons. Nearly 20% of those incarcerated are African Americans while Washington's total population is only 3.5% African American. (Washington State Department of Corrections Statistical Brochure, accessed October 18, 2007.

"Using state-level prison and reported crime data from 1972 through 2000, Liedka et al. (2006) found that, surprisingly, the effect of prison growth on crime diminishes as the scale of imprisonment increases. In fact, they determined that when the incarceration rate reaches a certain point (the inflection point), a further increase in prison population actually produces an increase in crime. They placed this inflection point at 3.25 prisoners per 1,000 persons in the general population."
(Discussion of Liedka, et al. in: Do higher incarceration rates mean lower crime rates? Snyder, Howard N. and Jeanne B. Stinchcomb, Corrections Today, 10/06, 92-97)

• Supermax Prisons: What We Know, What We Do Not Know, and Where We Are Going, Jesenia M. Pizarro. The Prison Journal, Vol. 88, No. 1, 23-42 (2008)
• Who lives in Super-Maximum Custody? A Washington State Study, David Lovell, Kristin Cloyes, David Allen, Lorna Rhodes. Federal Probation, 64(2), pp. 33-38. December, 2000.
• Confronting Confinement, Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons, 6/8/06.
• Assessment of psychosocial impairment in a supermaximum security unit sample, Kristin Cloyes, David Lovell, David G. Allen, Lorna A. Rohodes, Criminal Justice and Behavior, Vol 33, No. 6, December 2006 760-81.