Women In Prison Thematic Review

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,

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,

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.

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.

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

Unfortunately minimal data exists about the current prevalence of psychiatric disorders ailing the large population of female prisoners with mental health issues, other than data from years in the past. Lewis explains that the lack of current data impacts the difficulty of addressing the various needs of inmates through the development of new programs (Lewis, 2000). Many of the journal articles within this review address treatment for female inmates with mental health needs.

Mothers are more than happy to be sent to a rehabilitation centre then prison as this would be seen as a easy escape from prison but also being able to still stay at home whilst attending rehabilitation centres, with community work offered to convicted offenders too it is proved that women finish community work more than males and are able to cope with the work as they see a means of not going to prison. Women are a target to pressure and over half of women within the criminal justice system have suffered from ‘domestic violence, compared with a quarter of men’ and with a quarter of having ‘experienced sexual abuse in comparison to just under a tenth of male prisoners’. (Corston, 2007). Mothers feel more pain of imprisonment then fathers/males this is because the role as a mother can be as primary carers. Worry

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

In many countries, the female prison population has increased dramatically over the last years. This has generated widespread awareness in our society, leading people to question why the percentage multiplied exponentially. In the past, female offenders have not only been compared to their male counterparts, but to society’s view of the role of women; this role categorized them as housewives and mothers. But how did these housewives and mothers go from the home to the prisons? In most countries, women represent a minority of the prison population: normally between 2% and 8%. There are now more than 600,000 women behind bars and more than one million on probation and parole, (Bastick and Townhead 2008) most of these women are sentenced to prison for non-violent crimes. Many of these women in prison struggle with substance abuse, mental illness, and histories of physical and sexual abuse. According to the researchers Bastick and Townhead, all over the world women in prison suffer from intersecting

In Dallaire’s (2007) study she states incarcerated mothers of adult children report that their adult children were 2.5 times more likely to be incarcerated than adult children of incarcerated fathers. This pattern is detrimental to society as prison because a family lifestyle, the prospect of having a generation not see the inside of a jail cell diminishes. This study also shows incarcerated mothers of minor children were significantly more likely than incarcerated fathers of minor children to report that their children were in nonfamilial care situations such as foster care or orphanages (Dallaire 2007). This is important to note for the rehabilitation of incarcerated mothers. Since, incarcerated fathers do not bear responsibility of taking care of their children like the mothers do, there needs to be programs in which the partners of incarcerated mothers can be helped to keep their children from entering the system.

Prisons were historically a male focused institution; correctional facilities often fail to address the needs of incarcerated women. The importance of a women’s prison institution is the way the mothering system needs to be done. Of the women in the correctional system, a majority of them are between the ages of 24 and 35(Staretschi & Vaughn, 2010). There are mothers in prison who have children with a family member, friend, or foster care. Other

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 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

Meanwhile, “the number of incarcerated adult women has jumped by a shocking 757% since 1977, at nearly twice the rate of male prisoners” (Harrison & Beck, 2006). “The number of women in prisons and jails has reached a milestone,” explains Kara Gotsch, director of advocacy for the Sentencing project in Washington, DC. One of the main reasons why women are being locked up at an alarming rate is a result of a policy of mass incarceration. “Mass incarceration is a rate of incarceration so high that it affects not only the individual offender, but also whole social groups.” (American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 2011) Pursuing further, another main reason of the increase of incarceration of women are the sentencing policies brought about by the “war on drugs.”