Check out the red states:

For comparison, here is the same data on some blue and purple states* :

A Few Observations:

The average percent of offenders in community supervision is slightly lower in the red states than in the more liberal states, 59% to 63%. That may or may not be a coincidence. Or maybe red states are slightly more likely to keep offenders incarcerated than put them under community supervision. It’s also possible that the community supervision averages in the blue/purple states were skewed by an unrepresentative outlier, Massachusetts. In any case, the dataset is just too small to draw any firm conclusions.

According to the Census Bureau, California and Texas have the largest urban populations in the country. Violent crime rates tend to be higher in urban than rural areas. That’s probably why Texas and California have much higher rates of violent crime compared to the other states in these charts.

The predominantly rural states (Mississippi, Nebraska and Wyoming) have much lower violent crime rates than the others, except for Illinois. Mississippi’s an interesting case. The state as a whole has a fairly low crime rate, but it has more residents in the criminal legal system than the other states, relative to population. What’s up with that, Mississippi - you like to lock people up? Or maybe your prosecutors tend to be tough cookies, who don’t dismiss cases or divert offenders as much prosecutors in other states. Another possibility: the probation and parole departments in Mississippi may be more likely to revoke community supervision than the other states. Or none of the above. So many variables, so little data.

I can’t stress enough that this is an exploratory exercise. I’m looking for patterns.

The scientific process: explore…detect patterns…generate hypotheses… test some of them… refine hypotheses…keep looking for patterns…repeat. A gross simplification of course.

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* North Carolina is the purple state.

Note: Keep in mind that there are plenty of reasons why official crime rates vary among regions and states, some of which have little to do with the actual prevalence of crime. For example, in some places, crime victims may be less likely to report crimes or police may be less likely to make arrests.