The prison population was 36,000 in 1986. It's 203,000 now. We're talking only about the federal prison population; we're not talking about the prison population in the 50 states. These are the totals for all federal crimes. The current drug offender population exclusively right now is more than 100,000. I apologize that I cannot tell you exactly how high it was in 1986. My hunch is that it would have been on the order of 10,000 to 15,000 and no more.
On May 11th, 2009. See this statement in context.