NEW YORK (AP) - Oklahoma, Mississippi and the Mountain states have set the pace in increasing the imprisonment of women, while several Northeastern states are curtailing the practice, according to a new report detailing sharp regional differences in the handling of female offenders.

The report, to be released today by the New York-based Women's Prison Association, is touted as the most comprehensive state-by-state breakdown of the huge increase in incarceration of women over the past 30 years.

Overall, the number of female state inmates serving sentences of more than a year grew by 757 percent between 1977 and 2004, nearly twice the 388 percent increase for men, the report said.

According to federal statistics cited in the report, Colorado had 72 female inmates in 1997 and 1,900 in 2004, while the comparable numbers increased from 28 to 647 in Idaho, from two to 473 in Montana, from 187 to 2,545 in Arizona and from 30 to 502 in Utah.

Idaho, Wyoming and Montana were among six states, along with Oklahoma, North Dakota and Hawaii, where women comprised more than 10 percent of the prison population in 2004 - compared to the national average of 7 percent. In Rhode Island, by contrast, only 3.2 percent of the inmates were women.

In North Dakota, the Dakota Women's Correctional Rehabilitation Center in New England began taking inmates in November 2003.