From 2004 to 2014, Utah’s prison population has grown from 5,806 inmates to 7,106. Despite Utah’s population increase of 500,000 for that same time period, there were 14% fewer crimes in the state.
According to Pew Charitable Trusts, the correlating factor could be a number of things, including longer incarceration periods, the number of nonviolent offenders, and highly common drug offenses.
See the Newsmax article for more information.