Incarcerated Women In Prison

The Pocatello women prison is overcrowded, something is wrong with our women. Fair enough, more women are going to jail now, years ago it was unlikely if a woman went to jail. Women were looked on as a mother figure, or caregiver. However, times have changed, and we now have more women committing crimes than men or just as much men. Nevertheless, State prisons are a financial institution and a business, it takes a lots of money to run a functional Prison. Pocattelo need three prisons built in the next five years, costing one hundred and sixty milions dollars. This paper will focus on the state of Idaho and the city of Pocatello prison sitting story problems. I will talk about , , financial issues faced in building a new prison, recidivism rate of women inmates ,education and conclusion.

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

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

I. Introduction A. (Opening Device) The subject of women in prison has gained a lot of popularity in the past few years because of shows like ‘Orange is the New Black’. What most people don’t know is that about 10% of all incarcerated women are pregnant at the time they are put into prison, according to Regina Cardaci, RN, in an article published by The American Journal of Nursing, 2013. The wellbeing of women who give birth while incarcerated tends to get overlooked, as well as the wellbeing of their baby who was born into a life behind bars. I hope to inform you about the things I learned while researching this topic, and in return I hope you will see the negative results prison has on mothers and children.

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.

The growing rate of women in prison has spawned widespread awareness in our society; leading people to question why the percentage multiplied exponentially over the past three decades. In the past, female offenders have not only been compared to their male counterparts, but to society’s view on the role of women; the roles that labeled them as housewives and mothers. But how did these housewives and mothers go from the home to the prisons? The subject of women’s issues has sporadically been discussed in our society, and it has just recently being uncovered that women operate differently than men in situations; and those differences are now starting to effect the growth rate in the population of women in

Women who use drugs tend to be caught up in a cycle of prison and reoffending. The article written by Margaret Pereira is her personal account of the damaging effect that incarceration can have on a woman and her family.

Incarceration of women in United States prisons due to drugs-related cases is increasing at an alarming rate. Incarceration serves as one of the main punishment and rehabilitation of drugs-related offenses. While some are in to drugs abuse and trade willingly, others are innocently involved. It could be because of being used to distribute on behalf of their husbands or boyfriends, or even by simply living with people who are involved in the trade. In fact, 70% are those imprisoned due to non-violent drug-related crimes (American Jail Association. 2014).

Substance use and addiction are often the driving force responsible for placing these individuals into prison in the first place. Authors Annelle B. Primm et al. (2005) reported, “An increased portion of the federal criminal caseload was accounted for by drug prosecutions between 1982 and 1999 (21-236%) while 70% of jail inmates during 1998 had been convicted of a drug offense or had abused drugs regularly.” They further state, “The Bureau of Justice statistics reported that 4 in 10 violent victimizations involved alcohol use; parolees, jail and prison inmates used alcohol (40%) and drugs (20%) at the time of their offense: and two thirds of jail inmates were involved with drugs prior to admissions to jail” (p. 562). Perhaps an individual broke certain laws while under the influence of illicit substances, or they committed crimes in order to feed their drug habits.

Women’s population in the prison system is growing vastly, and continues to grow. Julie Ajinkya (March 8, 2013). Rethinking How to Address the Growing Female Prison Population. Retrieved from www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/news. According to the center for progress from the years 2000 through 2009 the number of women incarcerated in state or federal prisons rose by 21.6 percent in comparison to 15.6 percent increase for men. Majority of the women in the prison system struggle with, mental illness, histories of physical and sexual abuse, drug addiction, poverty and a lack of education. These are all contributing factors as to why these women end up incarcerated. This also means that our society still chooses to punish these criminals rather than heal and rehabilitate these offenders. The offenders get pushed away in to the criminal justice system instead of receiving the services they need that could help them live healthy, secure, and productive lives. In the book George, E. (2010). “A Woman Doing Life; Notes from a Prison for Women” R. Johnson (Ed.). New York, NY Oxford University it explains a story of a women’s perspective inside prison looking out. She explains her highs and lows in the prison and the relationships she has with the corrections facility and its employees.

After looking at a variety of different issues surrounding criminalized women I would like to focus on barriers that women face when leaving the confines of jail. Specifically, looking at the challenges they face by looking at community re-integration. I then will to look at some ways media covering marginalized women are progressing stigmas that only serve to hurt women. Finally I will look at the systematic ways in which current neo-liberal policies of governance continually repress the most marginalized of women. Currently there are far too many marginalized women who are getting lost in the system of reintegration; I hope to highlight current struggles that criminalized women deal with and address those issues on the government’s current

The authors of this study research whether or not being a women effects prison sentencing. They also delve deeper and see if gender effects minor, or serious crime more. They find for minor crimes women are less likely to receive prison time, then their male counterparts. In more serious crime they receive prison time on the same level as their male counterparts. However, women do receive a shorter amount of prison time, or less serious sentence.

The main reason women are in jail is not for committing serious crime like murder but women are in there because or committing crimes like robbery or drug abuse or being a part of the crime. The two women featured in the video were the first one as in jail because she could not afford the prescribed drug instead she switched to heroin she was serving a sentence for 13.5 years. The other woman was a part of robbery when she was 18, she helped her boyfriend to rob a store and in the process killed the store owner and she was serving a life sentence, she also received a college degree while she was behind the bars and couple of people actually asked authorizes to release her. So, what I think both the women were serving more sever sentencing then

Approximately 40% of criminal convictions in the year 2000 related to incarceration of women were on the basis of illegal drugs relation and 34% were for other non-violent crimes such as burglary, larceny, and fraud. 18% of women in prison have been convicted because of violent conduct, and 7% for public order offenses such as drunk driving, liquor law violations and vagrancy.

In Nawal El Saadawi’s book, Memoirs from the Women’s Prison, Dr. Saadawi speaks about her experience within the women’s prison system and the oppression that citizen, especially women face within Egypt.