We Should Stop Putting Women In Prison Analysis

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

‘We will turn this prison from a scrap heap to a repair shop.’ - Thomas Mott Osborne, warden of New York’s Sing Sing Prison (1913). Over the past decade, criminal justice reform has become an increasingly controversial political topic as the prison population rises higher and higher--it has reportedly quintupled from 1980 to 2009; from 320,000 inmates to 1.62 million, according to a professor of Fordham law school. Orange is the New Black, a memoir by Piper Kerman about her individual experience in a women’s prison, actually surpasses the memoir genre in that it isn’t solely focused on Kerman and her plights, but each woman she encounters in her year in prison, exposing the naked reality that prisoners, at their crux, are only human, and in some cases, it is senseless to lock so many people away for trifling crimes committed. “We now lock up one out of every hundred adults, far more than any other country in the world,” she writes, a startling statistic that makes

During week five I learn about how the crime and criminalization has an impact on women. The reading describe since the “gender- neutral prison policies” have been effect, women prisoners have male prison guards. This subjects women to sexually assaulted and harassed by prisoners guard. In the film about Connie Hanes she states that many fear telling because they are afraid they will more harassment by the guards or be segrated. Women medicals needs are “ignore or dismissed”. In the film Connie Hanes explains how a female prisoner died because she did had an asthma attack and did not receive medical attention in time. In addition, Connie who was a prisoner herself stated that she did not see a doctor until she was six months. This neglect and

The state and federal prison systems have many inmates. These inmates sometimes arrive at prison with pre-existing conditions and many that are incarcerated for the long term develop serious illnesses during their stay. Inmates who reported a medical problem when they arrived at state prisons  across the United States in the year 2004 were 57.1% men and  43.3% women reported no medical problems upon arrival. (BJS 2018) Inmates who reported 1 medical issue when they arrived were 25.8% men and 28.6% for women. The Population that reported 2 medical issues is 10.0% for men and 14.3% women, and 7.1 % percent of men and 13.9% of women reported 3 or more medical problems In the same year in the federal system 62.5% men and 47.3% women reported no

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.

The Women in prison Thematic review of 1996 by the HM chief inspector of prisons, a number of issues and findings were appropriately raised. Some issues consisted of the prison population, management, staff selection; structure for safety, needs based reception and the opportunity to contact families. This evaluation report will highlight the stated areas and explore other key components of the thematic review. An essential part of the review addresses recommendations made to improve specific areas.

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.

There are several factors that one must look at when talking about sentencing. Furthermore, I do believe that social class, gender, age, victim characteristics all plays an important role when passing sentencing. Furthermore it has been stated that even a judge’s case load plays a factor in the sentencing of prisoners (Bartollas & Seigel, 2013).

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.

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

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).

It is shocking to see the increase of women that have been imprisoned. Looking at the table titled “number of female prisoners under the jurisdiction of State or Federal correction. In 2003 the percentage was 6.6%this is when the increase of women in Federal and State prison. In 2006 to 2008 the rate was at all-time high of 6.9%. (120) However by 2009 the rate decreased to 6.8%. According to the author Mexican and African American women experience a high incarceration. The “get tough” policies were to dissolve the illegal activities of drug dealers and big kingpins. This policy didn’t work 35.9% of women are serving time for drugs passion offenses in the prison system many women of color. I believe some of the women that are incarcerated for passion is because to a boyfriend manipulate the girl into doing illegal activity , also females enjoy material things and coming from a low income area females believe they have something to prove to others in their low income neighbor. Many of these females are from dysfunctional homes where there is a lot of physical abuse, drug abuse, sexual abuse and mental abuse. The author states there have been new technologies for determine drug use, such as a urine analysis, which can determine if the female parolee is in violation of her parole. According to the author this is the reason women are returning to prison for parole violation. The author also states one out of five women returned to prison on parole violation. According to the

After reading all three articles for this week, I found the “Ladies Behind Bars” the most interesting due to the fact were relatable to the general population,

Female prisoners should have the right to cosmetic treatment of their hair and nails at least once a month because it can provide a sense of rehabilitation and promote good behavior. This provides a sense of security among prisoners and staff because if female prisoners are allowed to beauty treatment in jail, it will be something they can look forward to, making them to behave with the other inmates and staff. Also such treatment will make them feel more as a human instead of an animal being locked