Women In Early Mid-Nineteenth-Century Prisons

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.

Before the 1820s, most prisons resembled classrooms where inmates lived in large rooms together like a dormitory. The newer prisons of the era, like New York’s Auburn Prison, shepherded men into individual cells at night and silent labor during the day, a model that would prove enduring. Women at Auburn, however, lived in a small attic room above

After reading about the population of females in correction facilities, I came across the issue of incarcerating mothers. “Approximately 7 in 10 women under correctional sanction have minor children” (women offenders pg.7). Before reading this chapter, I have never put any importance to the challenge of sending mothers to prison. For the most part, I believe that judges and juries should consider the “motherhood” as a mitigating circumstance during a sentence. However, the age of the child and the crime should also play a role in the type of sentence given to a woman.

Often times when talking about the institution of slavery in the United States of America, men are at the center of the discussion; whether they were owners or slaves, men are presented first. Black women are pushed in the background except for the most famous like Harriet Tubman and Sally Hemings. In North America, specifically the United States, more than six hundred thousand slaves were brought in from Africa and the Caribbean between 1620 and 1865, the laws regarding slaves were condensed into slave codes that varied from state to state. Female slaves usually received the worst of it. Abusing them was legal, since the were considered property and as long as the owner wanted, he could have his way with any women he chooses on the plantation. Female slave were subject to harsh punishment for refusing the advances of the master. As one of, if not, the most vulnerable group in America at the time, female slaves had more threats to their existence than black men.

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.

There has been a lack of interest in female convicts as a subject of historical discussion. The history of female convicts has traditionally been incorporated into the framework of male convicts with grave reference to the male convict experience. The convict women who were transported to Australia on ships Elizabeth 5th and Henry Wellesley in 1836 faced extreme difficulty in achieving freedom and reputability. It is the view of many historians that “women were incorporated into a pattern initially designed to accommodate men”. This essay will investigate the origins and characteristics of a sample of 10 female convicts arriving to Sydney in1836. The essay aims to establish an alternative impression of the female convicts that were deemed damned whores, skill-less and prostitutes. In agreement with the 4 of the 5 studied historians, I hold the view that the women were the victims of a “repressive patriarchal society” and the appellation of female convicts as ‘damned whores’ is totally inadequate. I believe they were not members of a professional criminal class; they were humans with basic human needs, doing anything they could to survive.

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.

Summary: Chapter 2 discusses correctional history. Two French visitors were able to compare and contrast their experience in an American prison. Early punishment in the western countries consisted of whipping, branding, mutilation, drowning, suffocation, execution, and banishment. The first correctional facility were jails and influenced by Catholic Churches in the middle age times. This chapter introduces two individuals that were very influential to the correction system, John Howard, and William Penn. John Howard could persuade the government to lighten the punishment, separate jails for females and males, provide sanitary, food, and water. William Penn served jail time but was released due to wealth. Later in life he was given the opportunity to propose laws & he used this moment to fix how inmates are treated. He was against harsh punishment.

In 1790 The Walnut Street Jail became the first prison in the United States by converting a wing of the Walnut Street Jail for use in housing sentenced criminals for corporal punishment (Seiter, 2011). The philosophy or objective for the Walnut Street Jail was hard labor, strict discipline, solitary and silent confinement, and religious study, as a result prisoners were kept separate and silent. Prisoners were also masked as moved throughout the prison to avoid other prisoners identifying one another; they were given work, such as handicrafts during day and read the Bible and did penancing in the evenings (Seiter, 2011). When the state of Pennsylvania opened its’ first two prisons they adopted the Walnut Street Jail model of design and operations, which soon became known as the Pennsylvania system. As issues started resulting from the Pennsylvania system such as poor productivity of goods for resale; impossible to keep prisoners from seeing one another; too expensive to maintain as more staff were needed, and some prisoners becoming mentally ill; prison operators started searching for new ways to accommodate these issues. After acknowledging the doom of the Pennsylvania system, a new system that allowed prisoners to congregate during the day and remain separate and silent at other times known as the Auburn system.

Within the chapter “How Gender Structures the prison system” the issue of sexual assault behind prison walls is brought to light. Female prisoners were being sexually violated and humiliated. Davis states throughout this passage that woman experience sexualy assault, before and after they enter the prison system. Personally, after reading this chapter and reading external sources, I feel that women became the targets for sexual abuse by an authority figure. Whomever commits these heinous acts are using their role of authority as a coverup to inflict pain on these individuals. In the prison writings of Kate Richards O’Hare, we see her share a view similar to Davis. O’Hare states, “I found that under the guise of punishment for crime, and in

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.

Women slaves endured far worse punishment and cruelty than men ever did. Lets begin with women’s duties. Their duties consisted of two parts. The first part was that of being a household servant. They did the cleaning, cooking, cared for the white children of their Mistress and Master, and other household duties. Secondly, slave women had to not only maintain the household, at times, they were also expected to work in the fields and slave like the men on the plantations. Things like picking cotton, cleaning outside, feeding animals, and hoeing the grounds for planting crops. Slave men were never made to perform women duties.

In the past prisoners, both male and females, were simply treated as slaves of the state. Wardens had the freedom and discretion to maintain prisons as they wanted. This meant there was no outside interference. That definition for prisoners was derived in the case Ruffin v. Commonwealth (1871). The Supreme Court decided that forfeiting liberties and personal rights were consequences of the crime committed. Prisoners were viewed as slaves. In addition, losing citizenship rights meant losing the ability to complain about living conditions (Peak, 2010). Women and men were subjected to horrible prison conditions in which the living conditions were fifthly, overcrowded and harsh. Often times they were beaten and sexual abused by male

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

This paper will be a critical analysis of the book, “Women Behind Bars: The Crisis of Women in the U.S. Prison System. This paper will