From 1976 to 2019, there has been an increase in the number of women and girls incarcerated in federal and state prisons in the United States. Although the rate of incarcerated women in the U.S. has risen by 908 percent since 1990, their number continues to be far much lower than that of men (Bandele, 2017). Women and girls account for twenty-three percent of adults that are on parole and probation, and nine percent of adults that are in jail and prisons. More than sixty percent of the offenses are non-violent offenses, such as drugs- and property-related crimes (Bandele, 2017). The number of women incarcerated in the United States has grown twice when compared to the number of men being incarcerated in local jails.
Most researchers have attributed the increase in women's incarceration to the over-policing in racial minority communities, the expansion of prisons, including for-profit prisons, and the changes in arrests and sentencing practices and policies (Bandele, 2017). The war on drugs intensified in the 1970s and 1980s for drug-related offenses, and due to the changes in policies such as mandatory minimums for the length of incarceration and truth-in-sentencing, sentencing practices became more punitive. The number of women and girls entering state and federal prisons rose during the war on drugs as some of the women offenders began receiving prison sentences instead of community-based sanctions (Bandele, 2017). In 1980 for example, one in every ten women that were imprisoned was serving time for a drug-related offense; this figure rose in 2000, and it was approximately one in three women.
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Criminal justice professionals agree that few women pose a risk to public safety, but the current sentencing models assume that every individual convicted of or charged with a crime poses such a risk (Kajstura, 2019). The current incarceration laws are based on male crimes and male characteristics; thus, they fail to take into account the characteristics, roles, live and responsibilities of women in crime (Kajstura, 2019).
Racial disparities have also been attributed to the growing number of incarcerated women, with African-American women facing the highest rate of the detrimental war on drugs and incarceration (Sawyer, 2018). It has been estimated that from 1986 to 1991, the number of women in state and federal prisons rose by 828 percent for African-American women when compared to 241 percent of white women (Kajstura, 2019). Data retrieved from more than 40 states in the United States shows that the number of women sentenced with non-violent offenses has led to increased incarceration rates of African-American women (Sawyer, 2018). The criminal justice system is biased when issuing sentences to African-Americans, as they are more likely to receive longer sentences or offered non-incarceration options than whites; these practices have impacted the sentencing of African-American women (Kajstura, 2019).
The increase in the number of incarcerated women since 1972 has led to health and familial problems. Imprisoned women face multiple health concerns such as reproductive health problems, hepatitis C, HIV/AIDS and other chronic health issues with lower rates of treatment that incarcerated men (Kajstura, 2019). Criminal justice professionals and jurisdictions in the U.S. need to re-evaluate how to reduce the jail population of women, from their arrest through re-entry. The local and federal governments need to track the gender and race of people in prisons as there is no current national data as they need to create a bigger picture of what is happening to women in state prisons. State and county prisons must strive to set aside some of the funding from their jails and put it towards the creation of rehabilitation centers, women’s shelters, employment training and social support services that women need in order to stay out of the jail system.
References
Bandele, M. (2017, Oct. 23). Here’s how prisons and jail systems brutalize women . ACLU. Retrieved from https://www.aclu.org/blog/womens-rights/women-and-criminal-justice/heres-how-prison-and-jail-systems-brutalize-women .
Kajstura, A. (2019, Oct. 29). Women’s mass incarceration: The whole Pie . Prison Policy Initiative. Retrieved from https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2017women.html .
Sawyer, W. (2018, Jan. 9). The gender divide: Tracking women’s state prison growth . Prison Policy Initiative. Retrieved from https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/women_overtime.html.
