Let’s face it when people normally thinks about prisons, usually they have a mental picture of these overcrowded facilities, with really high walls barbed wire fencing, filled with men covered in tattoos. We hardly ever think of women, when the pictures of prisoners come to mind. Yes, at one day in time it was true that the number of incarcerated women was a very small in quantity compared to the general inmate population. However the percentage of female prisoners here in the US have grown so fast, that administrators in the prisons are having to reconsider the needs of these incarcerated women and address them. According to, Timothy Williams, a reporter of the New York Times, “ the Vera Institute of Justice and a program called the Safety …show more content…
When these confined women gain access to opportunities to obtain continued or higher education, they have the ability to renovate their lives as well as others in prison, along with their families and the communities that they will return to. Education in prison has a host of benefits for female inmates. What are these education benefits for women prisoners? What are the benefits of educating female offenders? The main idea behind education for inmates is to instill, and bring out their interest and generate confidence so that they can understand how to make better decisions in their daily lives. Opportunities are made accessible to female offenders so that they can achieve and improve their skills while incarcerated. This makes them marketable and more competitive in the workforce arena once they are released. Just being able to read and write is a positive fundamental skill for these women. When they learn how to speak the English language in the correct way, it is an enormous resource when it comes to communicating their skills to a prospective employer. If they can learn basic math, it helps them to know how to budget their finances. Education teaches these women how to operate their lives independently, so that they don’t have to rely on unhealthy relationship, public assistance programs or drugs. Additionally, many studies have shown how prison education programs gives women inmates a chance to break the cycle of many generations of inequality. When a child can see the positiveness in their parents, they are motivated to be more serious about their own education. In turn they start to see other alternatives to being a school dropout or doing crimes. Therefore breaking the cycle of generations of being
For the past centuries, women have been fighting for their rights, from their right to vote to equal rights in the workplace. Women resistance is the act of opposing those in power, so women can have a voice in the world. Women in prison are often overlooked. In the 1970s, the women prisoners’ rights movement began, and it is still going on today. The number of incarcerated females is rapidly growing compared to men. According to Victoria Law, a prison rights activist, she stated that the percentage of female prisoners increased 108%. This struggle is significant because women in prison are being silenced; they are the most vulnerable people in our country (Siegal, 1998). Women prisoners have the highest rate of suicide because they are
“It is not a surprise to see that prisoners all have a low education level. I guess a more educated person has enough sense not to be involved with crime…the relationship between crime and education is easy to see when viewing these facts” (Cordes 1). This is the view of most people when asked why people are in prison. People simply say that criminals were ill educated. As hard as we may try, we cannot do a lot about what happens before they enter prison, but there are many programs inside prisons to help rehabilitate them for when they leave the prison.
Proceedings of The National Conference On Undergraduate Research (NCUR) 2009 University of Wisconsin La-Crosse La-Crosse, Wisconsin April 16 - 18, 2009
The number of incarcerated women has grown significantly, increasing at a rate double to the rate of male incarceration since 1980 (Covington & Bloom, 2006). Braithwaite, Treadwell & Arriola note that incarcerated women have historically been a forgotten population, and despite the rapid growth of the population, their needs have continued to be ignored (2005). In addition to the stigma that comes with being or having been incarcerated, Braithwaite,
Punctuated by centuries of discrimination, oppression, and the outright mishandling of justice, the rights of women in prisons has been historically mauled by an unprecedented legal negligence. Without the equality and prioritization that was granted to their male counterparts, it took decades of malpractice before women had any form of safety or security in prisons at all.
Since the mid 80’s, the number of women incarcerated has tripled.The majority of women incarcerated are unskilled, impoverished and disproportionately women of color. As a result, African American children are nine times more likely to have a parent in prison than a White child.
The article "The Impact of Career and Technical Education Programs on Adult Offenders: Learning Behind Bars" by Howard Gordon and Bracie Weldon (2003) studies of how prisoners receiving educations in prison reduces the recidivism rate. Gordon and Weldon studied the inmates who were participating in the educational programs at the Huttonsville Correctional Center in West Virginia and claimed that inmates who participated in the educational programs were less likely to recidivate once released back into the population as compared to inmates who did not participate in these programs (Gordon & Weldon, 2003). This study provides valuable information as to the effectiveness of educational programs in prison and how they affect prisoner's lives
Male prisoners also continue to make up the majority of the prison population. However, women prisoner rates have been on the rise and have exceeded that of male growth rates since 1995. In fact, due to the increase of the women prison population, various issues have arisen which require women to be treated differently from men. Such issues correctional facility’s face because of this increase include program delivery, housing conditions, medical care, staffing, and security (American Corrections, 2016). These problems are in part due to the different social and economic differences women are faced with in prison and while preparing for their release back to society.
Women have been fighting for equal rights for decades. And, as of a result of this, have gained many equal rights. But are those rights just supposed to disappear when a woman gets incarcerated, and at what price does it cost that woman, to get her rights back, or does she ever get them back? The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, and with each year the percentage of women that make up that rate, are growing. According to Statistics on Women Offenders- 2015. (1997), “Since 2010, the female jail population has been the fastest growing correctional population, increasing by an average annual rate of 3.4 percent”. It also states that, in 2013, women made up 17% of the jail population, and 25% of probation population in the U.S. Not only have these numbers been steadily rising, but of those incarcerated, approximately 77% are likely to reoffend (p.1). This has risen quite a concern in society today. Why is there such a high chance that incarcerated women will likely reoffend? At a micro level, is it the fault of the woman? Or, a larger issue at the macro level, with society, laws, policies, and loss of the most basic rights that every citizen should be entitled to? According to Pinto, Rahman, & Williams. (2014), incarcerated women need help meeting individual needs when they are released, such as, reducing drug or alcohol use, finding a job, health issues, as well as help in dealing with the impact of
We see the impact Folsom State Prison is making on female offenders in the following video...
Megan Comfort focuses on how secondary prisonization affects a lot of women who visits an inmate. Comfort says how women experience a lot of disadvantages, such as: restricted rights, limited resources,
Assessing the consequences of our country’s soaring imprison rates has less to do with the question of guilt versus innocence than it does with the question of who among us truly deserves to go to prison and face the restrictive and sometimes brutally repressive conditions found there. We are adding more than one thousand prisoners to our prison and jail systems every single week. The number of women in prisons and jails has reached a sad new milestone. As women become entangled with the war on drugs, the number in prison has increased if not double the rate of incarceration for men. The impact of their incarceration devastates thousands of children, who lose their primary caregiver when Mom goes to prison.
In my research, I read an academic journal, articles and watched two documentaries that support my claim. Which is that women go through many obstacles like mental health, sexual harassment, and inequality in and out of prison. In the Documentary 20/20 “A Nation of Women Behind Bars,” by Diane Sawyer. She visits four prisons and interviews women on the crimes they committed and if they changed in the time they were incarcerated. Nicole Koester is from Maryland Correctional Institution for Women in Jessup. She is married
For centuries the general public have perceived that the deep horrors of the prison system only existed within the majority of incarcerated male inmates. However now due to recent investigations researchers are finding that this is not the case. For a lengthened period of time the female prison system have been given low attention in comparison to male inmates
One point of view on this question comes from an article by Anna Merlan titled “Should We Stop Putting Women in Prison?” where the author explores different ideas relating to women’s role in the penal system. She refers to an article printed in the Washington Post that tells about how some members of Britain’s House of Lords are advocating abolishing women’s prisons in the UK. Merlan recognizes points made in this article that mention how women are treated unfairly in prison, one example being the “repetitive, unnecessary overuse of strip-searching.” She also references that article by stating that “women make up only 5 percent of the prison population, and serve, generally, very short terms for largely non-violent crimes.” Merlan then shifts the conversation to US prisons and