Roles Of Women In Prison Essay

Women adjusting to prison face numerous challenges as they navigate the complex social dynamics and power structures within the correctional environment. A lack of access to gender-specific resources and programs, limited healthcare services, and high rates of past trauma and abuse often shape their experiences. Despite these obstacles, many women develop coping strategies and form supportive relationships with other inmates to help them adapt to life behind bars. Women adjusting to prison deserve attention because they face unique challenges and circumstances that are often overlooked. From the lack of access to proper healthcare to the impact on their families, these women need specialized support to successfully reintegrate into society.

The United States criminal justice system, an outwardly fair organization of integrity and justice, is a perfect example of a seemingly equal situation, which turns out to be anything but for women. The policies imposed in the criminal justice system affect men and women in extremely dissimilar manners. I plan to examine how gender intersects with the understanding of crime and the criminal justice system. Gender plays a significant role in understanding who commits what types of crimes, why they do so, who is most often victimized, and how the criminal justice system responds to these victims and offenders. In order to understand the current state of women and the way in which gender relates to crime and criminal justice, it is first

After reading A Woman Doing Life : Notes from a Prison for Women, I learned a lot more than I thought I knew about the life of women in jails or prisons. Erin George , the main character , gives readers an ethnographic insight on the struggles women face in prison. The hardships women face in prison consist of, and are limited to harsh shakedowns, poor medical treatment, and changes within the prison system that intentionally dehumanizes women inmates. Erin George before prison was a middle class women who seem to live a decent life, she is a mother of 3 and had a great support system within her family. She was happily married until she was convicted of murdering her husband which landed her six-hundred-three years in prison.

It is no secret that the United States’ criminal justice system is majorly flawed in more ways than one. We hear of all of the injustice that many civilians face on a day to day basis, which mostly surrounds the problems related to men, but what about women? Why don’t we hear about the tribulations and sufferings that our women undergo on a day to day basis within our criminal justice system? As mentioned in an article from the American Jail Association, investigation in fields ranging from subjects of general and mental health, substance abuse and addiction relating to drugs and prescriptions, and physical violence against women combined with examination and practice in the criminal justice field, have discovered that women offenders experience challenges that are not only different from their male counterparts, but also greatly influence their involvement in criminal justice systems, including jails and prisons (Ney, 2014). This information alone provides a basis to why imprisoned women should be more of a topic. This literature review will examine the several ways in which women who are incarcerated experience emotional trauma; and in some ways, abuse. My hypothesis is that most of the trauma encountered by incarcerated women majorly branches from preceding events and occurrences that happened prior to becoming imprisoned, and that they worsen as a result of improper treatment and resources within

The percent of incarcerated women has risen drastically, over 700%, in the last thirty years. Of those women, one-third populates prisons in the United States. Despite the dramatic increase of women, officials often overlook women’s prisons when making decisions. Everyone can agree that the imprisoned should still have basic support while serving their time. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Corry Booker, however, believe that this support will lead to improved public safety and a more just system.

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

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

As the years have passed our society has increased in violence, prostitution, and drug trafficking, it used to be known that men where the ones who were doing almost any crime out there, some of them it was the only thing they knew how to do, they didn’t rely on a trade to support for their family’s so dealing was the way. At times this did bring in a good amount of income for their families, enough so that the females did not have to work. But what happened when the provider was sent to jail? The women would often pic up there habits because that’s all they also knew how to do. Now in a more modern society, women also run prostitution rings, and drug trafficking, and even deal drugs. So now by this point jails now had to deal with accommodating women in their cells.

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

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.

Women prisoners are one of the most neglected and misrepresented groups of people in society (Belknap, 2015). They are seen as invisible in our society. The class book highlights three different reasons why they are seen as invisible. The leading reason is because there is a small proportion of women prisoner in the total jail and prison population (Belknap, 2015). Another reason is because women incarcerated are less likely than men incarcerated to cause commotion and make reform demands (Belknap, 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

Women in the prison system have difficult times when they enter the prison system pregnant they are not allowed the chance to become mothers for their newborn babies, but there is a new prison nursery system. A prison nursery system is a beneficial system for women and babies. In a regular prison system mothers that enter the prison pregnant are not allowed to keep their newborn babies inside the prison, which the babies do not get to experience the warm and southing communication with their mothers. In a regular prison system mothers gives up the right to become a mother, and the fathers or relatives are given custody of the babies, but babies that are born in the prison system typically do not have a stable family environment. As a result some infants end up in foster homes

Gender stratification has always remained a problem in our society. It is only women who suffer from the discrimination, they have been fighting for their rights for decades. Women in prisons has now become an upcoming issue they are one of the fastest growing segments of prison environment around the globe. The prisons are built to punish people for the crime they committed and make them a good person before they get back to the society rather than harming them when they come in and making it difficult for them to cope with their life. Women get locked up in prisons for various crimes they commit. The rate of women being imprisoned is increasing day-by-day nevertheless men take the highest number of prisoners. Most of the women offenders get incarcerated for non-violent crimes (Find). Once they get incarcerated their access to education, work and other services gets taken away. Moreover, if they are single mothers their kids often suffer from being away from their mothers. In this essay, the problems faced by women prisoners would be discussed how they suffer as female prisoners and the kind of treatment they get for being women. The lack of medical care inside the prison environment for women would be critically analysed in the essay. Furthermore, how these problems affect the outer world will be discussed, how the offenders as well as their family members, victims and the community get impacted.

Being a prisoner is a doubly stigmatizing and painful experience because they are seen as "criminal" and a “bad woman", since this status transgresses the traditional concept of the role of women in society. The rejection and guilt that women suffer in prison becomes extensive. That is to say, it not only affects the prisoners' lives, but also has impacts on their social networks - mainly affecting the family and particularly their children. Also, in the face of the "crime" of not having fulfilled their traditional female role, they seek to reform their criminal behavior - which is understood as the result of emulating male behavior - through activities that reinforce and re-establish their traditional feminine