We Should Stop Putting Women In Prison Analysis

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

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

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.

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

As of 2010, more than 1 million women are under the supervision of the Criminal Justice System, 112,793 of them being in prison (Beac, A, & Karberg,J,C). It is known that the United States has the highest incarceration of women. Numerous studies have shown that due to the “war on drugs”, the government policy changed on drug sentencing. Women are more likely to be in prison or jail for non-violent and low level drug related crimes compared to men. Especially poor women of color, bear a significant burden of this war.

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.

“Prison is not an isolated institution, it is part of a continuum in the control of women, whether by our lack of access to economic independence, violence, racism or specific laws that target women such as prostitution and social security. The society that condemns the behavior of women it imprisons, yet accepts the treatment prisoners are given inside is at best hypocritical, but perhaps more correctly, sadistic” (Amanda George). The prison system takes people away from their families and communities, for petty crimes and then give harsh sentences that doesn’t match the crime that was committed. Women are placed in an oppressive and controlling environment which subjects them to be treated in a manner which society looks down on but accept and sadly, does nothing about. Correspondingly, Piper Kerman wrote a memoir “Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison”

‘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

As the article mentions it seems that women who are incarcerated are more likely than men to have neurological, biological or psychological abnormalities (Schwartz J. et al., Pg 16). This means that women who are committing similar offenses as men tend to be at a greater risk of suffering from some sort of mental illness. Another important point in the article that was mention is that many women who become addicted to illegal substance tend to be at a higher risk of committing burglary, and theft in order to continue to gather money for drugs.

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

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

For centuries the general public have perceived that the deep horrors of the prison system only existed within the majority of incarcerated male inmates. However now due to recent investigations researchers are finding that this is not the case. For a lengthened period of time the female prison system have been given low attention in comparison to male inmates

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).

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

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,