US incarceration rate hits another new high

Thanks to this tip from TalkLeft, I see that the Bureau of Justice Statistics has released this report, “Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2005,” which documents yet another increase in the overall incarceration rate in the United States.  Highlights from the report can be found in this press release, in this preview page, and in this AP article about the report.

As is often the case, the remarkable state-to-state variation in incarceration rates always intrigues me (especially when the federal Justice Department rails about the importance of national sentencing uniformity).  Consider, for instance, this factoid:

Louisiana and Georgia led the nation in percentage of their state residents incarcerated (with more than 1 percent of their state residents in prison or jail at midyear 2005). Maine and Minnesota had the lowest rates of incarceration (with 0.3 percent or less of their state residents incarcerated).

Some recent additional posts about incarceration rates:

• Major report on women in prison
• US leads the world … in locking people up
• The number 1,000,000 in sentencing perspective