Female Prisons

For the last forty years, women have been steadily increasing the prison populations. The United States has one third of the world’s female prison population. Incarceration rates for females have increased more drastically than for males since the early 1970s. By 2010, the women’s incarceration rate ascended twice as fast as the male prison population. One of the biggest reasons women have become

IN a twenty year period there was little evidence to suggest cocorrectional prisons are effective in benefiting female prisoners (Schmalleger & Smykla, 2015). In fact, males have exploited most females before entering prison, and these females continue being exploited in current coed facilities (Schmalleger & Smykla, 2015). Surprisingly, even though single sex prisons have poor results, there is no support to change this format (Schmalleger & Smykla, 2015).

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

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.

Every year the amount of women entering the prison system as offenders rises higher than the year before. Yet most reintegration efforts are still only focused on men. This leaves women offenders unprepared and at risk for returning to jail. Women have been shown to reintegrate into society when provided with family support while serving their prison term, educational and employment programs during and after their sentence and a positive relationship with their supervising parole officer.

The system unable to adapt for such a small number in comparison to men, incarcerated women are expected to fit into an institution developed by men for men, resulting in worse conditions, less familial contact due to fewer facilities, and more rules as if the women were children, all direct reflections institutionalized sexism and HM both in and out of the corrections arena. Additionally, due to the Madonna-like factor, women who are convicted have a farther fall from grace within society and do not have the luxury of the “good old boy” connections for defense and protection. While gender roles and expectations are assigned by society, believing women should be equal to men demands the acknowledgement that women can offend like men (Pearson, 1998) and therefore should be incarcerated not ‘like men’ but in an equalized manner. Perhaps, rather than revamping institutions developed to house and rehabilitate women, we first investigate the standards currently in play for the policing, convicting and sentencing of men as the foundation of creating a nonsexist criminal justice

It has already been established that the prison population for female offenders is growing, but the complexity of the population is changing as well. Special populations make up the group of female offenders, specifically including middle-aged inmates, physically ill inmates, and of course mentally ill inmates (Lewis, 200). The pathology of these women vary, many struggle or previously struggled with substance abuse, psychosis,

Robertson-James and Nunez (2012) suggests that the needs of incarcerated women have traditionally been ignored due to the tremendous percentages of incarcerated persons being men. While this may be true, women and men have issues that differ from one another and should be treated as separate issues. The physical and mental health needs, as Robertson-James and Nunez (2012) puts it, may be inferior than those of incarcerated men or women in the overall population. It is almost as if the problems of incarcerated women are undetectable or are seen as less important in the criminal justice

Women are twice as likely as men to avoid incarceration if convicted of a crime. Whether or not this is fair, though, is highly debated. Some politicians argue that women’s prisons be abolished all together, while Men’s Rights Activists push for equal sentencing for comparable crimes. It has been proven that judges tend to give women less time in prison, or no incarceration at all, and the reasons for this support the imbalance in sentencing. Though many view women’s tendency to receive lighter punishments as unfair, it is justified that women receive this treatment because of legal rules that surround the subject, the statistics that show women commit less serious and violent crimes, and how women being incarcerated impacts those around them.

In the past 20 years, women inmates have been one of the fastest growing prison populations in the United States. Women inmates represent a myriad of voices that speak to poverty-stricken lives, histories of abuse, separations of mother and child, struggles with substance abuse, health issues, and economic hardships. Women’s prisons have increasingly become a source of intrigue and controversy, particularly through the broadcasting of a number of television documentaries, such as Orange Is the New Black. This explores all the issues and concerns regarding female inmates. Many times women in prison are overlooked, as the prison problems that receive media attention occur primarily at male institutions.

After visiting www.womenandprison.org a website created by incarcerated women, I learn the ins and outs of what are some of the leading factors for women and prisons now. Most of the women interviewed have a brutal past with drug addiction, prostitution or abuse. These are the main reasons women today still are being incarcerated. However gender experience in prison expressed by women is very painful. Unlike men women suffer from the state of mind where they are home sick. Those who tend to have made families back home it begins to be tougher for women to be separate from her child. Also it is said to be all mind games a lot of women loose a sense of social control where they are no longer accepting to the reasoning which has brought them to

Women 's prisons in general are much more different and complicated than a men 's prison. When entering a women 's prison, the first thing that you need to know is it has changed significantly over the years. Women first began to make an appearance in prisons in the earlier years, but were not heavily charged as comparison to men. In the earlier years of the 1870’s the United States began placing women in correctional facilities separate from men. It was on July 27, 1873 when the first female prison opened. As well as the men prisons, women faced bad conditions and treatments where they suffered tremendously. Some of the things they experienced were overcrowding, cruel punishments and prohibition to recreation or interaction time. (Timetoast)

Even though mothers in prison represent only 8.1% of all incarcerated parents, the actual numbers are shocking at 65,600 by 2007 mid-year (Glaze and Maruschak, 2010). This number has doubled (122%) during the previous 16 years and the number of children affected have increased by 131% to 147,400. In addition, the rate of increase in incarcerated mothers was twice that of incarcerated fathers during the same period. Race is also a significant factor, with children of African American and Hispanic parents being 8.9 and 3 times, respectively, more likely to have an incarcerated parent than White children (The Sentencing Project, 2007). This essay will examine prison policies surrounding incarcerated women in U.S. prisons, including those in the state of Mississippi.

This research paper will focusing on incarcerated female inmates in the US prison system. Mainly the systemacy, environment and also the ills which is hindering its advancement of this sector of the criminal justice system. Also, diving into the diversity, political affiliations etc.

Meanwhile, “the number of incarcerated adult women has jumped by a shocking 757% since 1977, at nearly twice the rate of male prisoners” (Harrison & Beck, 2006). “The number of women in prisons and jails has reached a milestone,” explains Kara Gotsch, director of advocacy for the Sentencing project in Washington, DC. One of the main reasons why women are being locked up at an alarming rate is a result of a policy of mass incarceration. “Mass incarceration is a rate of incarceration so high that it affects not only the individual offender, but also whole social groups.” (American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 2011) Pursuing further, another main reason of the increase of incarceration of women are the sentencing policies brought about by the “war on drugs.”