Rethinking The Growing Female Prison System

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

women has increased significantly, increasing at a rate double to the rate of male incarceration since 1980 (Covington & Bloom, 2006). Braithwaite, Treadwell and 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,

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.

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,

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

With nearly 2/3 of the female prison population at the state level having dependent children (The Sentencing Project, 2007), it seems reasonable that prison and social policymakers would be forced to recognize the special needs of this demographic. However, this is not the case. When state child welfare agencies were canvassed about special programs for these children, only 16% responded in the affirmative. Close to 10% of incarcerated women have children living in foster care and the vast majority of parents are being held at locations more than 100 miles away. The distance is over 500 miles for 43% of

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

Programs in prisons that are tailored to women’s unparalleled needs would benefit society in the grand scheme of things. On an individual level it could break the cycle of abuse, victimization, and self-loathing. It is essential that the double damage done to female offenders be repaired because they deserve an unbiased chance at a good life. After all, they could represent your mother, aunt, sister, niece, wife and girlfriend. In her book, A woman doing life: Notes from a prison for women, Erin George did a fine job in depicting the life of women during the time they were incarcerated. She also included a light reflection of what life was like before prison and what life could be like after prison. This book included vivid passages of how

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.

For countless years now, women have been struggling for equal rights in society. I chose to write my essay on the topic of women in prison because they need support but often overlooked by society. These women go through many obstacles like mental health, sexual harassment, and inequality. The number of females in prison is currently rising every day, in spite of the fact that men still the leading numbers in jail. Women are in prison due to different causes many are incarcerated for nonviolent crimes. Simply because they need to survive in a society that is very sexist and racist. It's hard to find a stable job that's why some females support their families by becoming a prostitute, steal or sell drugs. Once incarcerated, women not only have limited access to job coaching programs, education and several other services they are also sexually abused. Basically, inside prison females go through the same discrimination and abuse they go through outside.

The rapid increase of female prisoners in a male-dominated system has left fewer adequate resources available for women. In addition, most research shows that women's prison experiences differ drastically from those of men because their relationships inside and outside prison tend to shape the culture then enter into in prison. Women tend to form differing structures than men, finding roles similar to that which they would undertake outside prison. In addition, over 60 percent of women in prison were the primary guardians for their children, causing women

The number of women in prison has increased dramatically in the last few decades, yet women’s gendered experiences in the criminal justice system have been largely overlooked. Because of mandatory terms enacted since the 1970s, the U.S. prison system has experienced expansive population growth, increasing nearly five-fold (Schlesinger 2010). People who, in the past, would have been given probation or suspended sentences are now being incarcerated. These new policies are effecting women disproportionately. “Between 1980 and 2014, the number of incarcerated women increased by more than 700%, more than double the rate of men (The Sentencing Project 2015)”. Nearly a quarter of these women are mentally ill and more than half haven’t finished high school (Kerness 2010). The majority of the increase in these new prison admissions are from non-violent drug related charges (Schlesinger 2010). Because women are generally the primary caretakers of the family, the increasing incarceration rates among women has widespread effects.

Some of the most neglected, misunderstood and unseen women in our society are those in our jails, prisons and community correctional facilities. While women's rate of incarceration has increased dramatically, tripling in the last decade, prisons have not kept pace with the growth of the number of women in prison; nor has the criminal justice system been redesigned to meet women's needs, which are often quite different from the needs of men.

Prison is no picnic for anybody. Regardless of age, race, country of origin, or sexuality life behind bars is, for lack of a better word, hard. That being said, the number of women in prisons across America has been rising at a staggering rate since the commencement of the war on drugs .

The initial thought of Kerman towards such women behind prison walls were emotionally unstable or evil manipulators that were naturally deviant. Female offenders were negatively portrayed as inherently deviant was by news and media (Easteal, Bartels, Nelson, & Holland, 2015; Cecil, 2007). Because of these damaging images, the general public is often led to believe that female offenders are born criminals. Instead of focusing on the negative depictions of female offending, there should be a focus on why female offends and how their offending is different to men.