Maine and Minnesota tied for the lowest incarceration rate, with 141 inmates per 100,000 residents.
The states with the lowest incarceration rates were Minnesota, with 128 inmates per 100,000 residents; Maine, with 129 inmates per 100,000; and North Dakota, with 158 inmates per 100,000.
It has one of the lowest incarceration rates in Europe – less than half of those of England and Wales or Scotland.
As a result, among the 10 most populous states — including Texas, which is reforming its system — New York had the lowest incarceration rate and the lowest crime rate in 2010, according to the Pew Center on the States ("Prison Count 2010").
(Sweden imprisons about 80 people per 100,000 of population; Minnesota, about 300; and Texas, almost 1,000. Maine has the lowest incarceration rate in the United States, at 273; and Louisiana the highest, at 1,138).
That's why this legislation is specifically targeted to support the women and girls who need them most: In New York City, 79percentt of public school students are from low-income families; incarceration disproportionately affects low-income and minority communities; and being homeless often means having to prioritize food or housing over buying menstrual products.
Japan maintained a very low crime rate and one of the lowest imprisonment rates in the world, though some moderate increases in the severity of punishments, including incarceration, created conditions of overcrowding in its prisons starting in the 1990s.
The counties on the map are color coded, from light blue to red, from sparsely populated to densely populated, and from a low rate of incarceration to high.
Perhaps more importantly, since many of the patients in this study were at-risk for homelessness for a variety of reasons (e.g., low income, recent incarceration, depressive symptoms, and alcohol or drug addiction) residential instability could have resulted from the worsening of just one of these factors for individuals without much of a safety net.
