Today’s incarceration population shows that a lot of inmates are minority or female. The female incarceration rate has slowly increased over the years. According to Schmalleger and Smykia (2015), some characteristics that are found in these inmates are: young, poor, low education, abuse, mental disorder (p. 222). Being young definitely has effects on a person especially when it comes to mentality. Younger people tend to make some bad decisions growing up, but that’s how we learn sometimes is from our mistakes. Being poor is rough especially if you have a family. When you are poor you will hit times where you will think about or do anything you can to provide for yourself and family. According to Alfred and Chlup (2009), drug use and selling
Youth in high risk communities rely on crime to get what they need or want, either because their families cannot afford their needs or simply because their parents are already working hard to afford the basic necessities of life such as food and shelter. I admit that up until I read this book I never stopped to think about the problem we face with mass incarceration; reading it made me realize how desensitized I am from some tough social realities, as an upcoming social worker it will be my goal to be more aware of issues that not many talk about or advocate for. People go through life carrying the stigmas and stereotypes they were raised with and it is our personal responsibility to challenge our perceptions and beliefs. It is easier to believe stereotypes rather than take the time to research their validity, and we conform to the idea that people are in prisons because they did something wrong and deserve to be penalized. Reality is that there are inmates whom perhaps were wrongfully convicted and in worst cases innocent, they just couldn’t afford a lawyer or accepted a guilty plea because they were told it was their best option.
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,
The incarcerated population are typically of low socioeconomic and low education levels. (4) Interestingly, low socioeconomic status and education levels on their own are directly linked with poor health. (5) When these social determinants of health are combined with prisonisation; the adaptation process in which incarcerated individuals adjust themselves to behavioural standards within the institutions which are not comparable with those of life outside prison.(6) This confines the already vulnerable to an environment of violence and drug use, which leads to further decline in health status while serving sentences. (1) In addition to the low socioeconomic status and education level of prison inmates, we can also establish that inmates are predominately male when compared to the
However, evidence indicates that growing incarceration has significantly increased poverty and negatively impacts the socioeconomic opportunities for prisoner’s families upon release (Wacquant, 2010). Because African-American men are disproportionately incarcerated, increased numbers of African-American women have increased ties to prison members. The result is that African-American women disproportionately experience the effects that mass incarceration produces on social and economic success. African-American women are forced to struggle with the economic loss and stresses caused by mass incarceration and poverty (DeFina and Hannon, 2013).
Society implemented policies like the Anti-drug Abuse Act of 1986 and Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 that targeted racial minorities, people with disabilities and those from low socioeconomic backgrounds. On an institutional level, health disparities continue to rise between the prison and general population because the private prison industry is focused solely on monetary gain. The cost of providing healthcare to prisoners diminishes profit. A lack of quality education and exorbitant high school dropout rates increase the likelihood of unemployment and criminal behavior leading to incarceration. Policy, privatization of prisons and education are upstream factors impacting incarceration and healthcare in prisons. Employment, income and criminal behavior are downstream factors. Prisoners aren’t being given resources or opportunities for rehabilitation. Instead, they are thrust back into the social inequalities that predisposed them to a life of drugs and crime. As people are disenfranchised from society, they are pushed to the margins of
The United States incarcerates more people, per capita, than any other nation in the entire world. State and local prisons and jails account for about 80% of incarcerations. Although crime rates have decreased since the 1990s, incarceration rates have soared. According to a recent Prison Policy Initiative publication, approximately 2.3 million people are currently “locked up” in the United States. Of these 2.3 million people, 1 in 5 are locked up for a drug related offense. Statistics show that prisoners and felons imprisoned for drug related crimes are disproportionately Black and Hispanic. The mass incarceration issue in the United States derives from the many arrests associated with these “offenses” regarding drugs and the war on drugs.
There is no single exact reason for the cause of recidivism and why prisoners return to a life of crime living with imprisonment, but some of the reasons do include the following: lack of socialization, inability to reintegrate into society after returning from prison, antisocial attitudes, association with other criminals, lack of support, substance abuse, neglect or abuse of parents of guardians.( http://study.com/academy/lesson/recidivism-definition-causes-prevention.html). According to The Daily Beast “One of the biggest factors is age. The prison population is getting older,” (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/22/america-s-recidivism-nightmare.html) In a recent
In the past thirty years, the incarceration of women has risen exponentially. Poverty, lack of access to education, abuse, addiction, mental health and parenting issues all impact women’s criminality and health before, during and after they are incarcerated (Hannaher, K., 2007). By 2010 there were nearly 206,000 women currently serving time in the criminal justice system. As the years go by, the numbers are constantly increasing (Women Behind Bars, 2015). The number of pregnant women incarcerated has also been on the rise. Most incarcerated women do not receive proper prenatal care before entering the criminal justice system. Because these women are from mostly poverty neighborhoods, they are more likely to endure domestic violence, poor
Australia has witnessed a gradual and undeniable increase in imprisonment rates for women in the last twenty years. Representing the plight of criminalized and imprisoned women is not a straightforward task. These women do not share a single lived experience, nor do they reflect a neat and simplistic narrative of individual redemption. Drawing public attention to the predicament of criminalization and imprisonment in women allows us to understand the of rising incarceration rates and what reasons may account for this growth in female incarceration rates and how it affects policy makers in their attempts to address challenges.
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.
Only 53% of state and 7% of federal prisoners served sentences for violent crimes in 2013. 59% of females and 50% of males in federal prisons and 24% of females and 15% of males served for drug violations in the same year. By the end of 2013, approximately 16% of prisoners in state prisons were convicted on drug charges. 57.6% of those convicted on drug charges were minorities—African American or Hispanic. As these statistics show, drug policies and other sentencing regulations have resulted in disproportionate imprisonment of minorities and high overall prison populations.
The United States features a prison population that is more than quadruple the highest prison population in Western Europe (Pettit, 2004). In the 1980s, U.S. legislation issued a number of new drug laws with stiffer penalties that ranged from drug possession to drug trafficking. Many of those charged with drug crimes saw longer prison sentences and less judicial leniency when facing trial. The War on Drugs has furthered the boom in prison population even though violent crime has continued to decrease steadily. Many urban areas in the U.S. have a majority black population. With crime tendencies high in these areas, drugs are also prevalent. This means that a greater percentage of those in prison are going to be black because law
Today’s prison population shows that an overwhelming majority of prisoners are the product of social breakdown. Prisoners are far more likely to have lived in poverty, to come from broken families, to be unemployed and in considerable debt and to be experiencing an addiction. Deprivation is an important factor that leads to crime. Poverty doesn’t cause crime but there is an obvious direct relationship between them. Effects of deprivation can impact on
The number of women incarcerated is growing at a rapid pace. This calls for a reevaluation of our correction institutions to deal with women’s involvement in crime. Increasing numbers of arrests for property crime and public order offenses are outpacing that of men. The “War on Drugs” has a big influence on why our prisons have become overcrowded in the last 25 years. Women are impacted more than ever because they are being convicted equally for drug and other offenses. Female criminal behavior has always been identified as minor compared to Male’s criminal behavior. Over the years women have made up only small part of the offender populations. There is still only a small
In viewing the information contained in the aforementioned articles, one can immediately understand the underlying reasons that women are committing more crimes than men. Through the mid-1990s, the arrest rates of both genders has increased steadily, with the male rate far exceeding that of females (Gross, 2009, pp. 84). However, in recent years, a shift has been seen, with the numbers of female offenders rising significantly, especially at the juvenile level, which significantly raises the likelihood of re-offending later in life. As such, an understanding of the differences between the sexes in terms of the reasoning behind their offenses has long been researched.