Pubdate: Mon, 30 Nov 2015
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2015 The New York Times Company
Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/lettertoeditor.html
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298

WOMEN BEHIND BARS

In the last few years, America's out-of-control incarceration boom 
has finally started to get the sustained public scrutiny, and 
condemnation, that it deserves. But one key element of the story 
still receives too little attention: the number of women in the 
nation's prisons and jails.

Men account for more than 90 percent of those behind bars. But the 
number of female inmates, most of whom are mothers, has been growing 
at an even faster rate than the overall prison population. In 1980 
there were just over 15,000 women in state prisons. By 2010 there 
were nearly 113,000. When jail inmates are added in, there are about 
206,000 women currently serving time - nearly one-third of all female 
prisoners in the world.

This soaring population is largely a result of the war on drugs; the 
vast majority of the women behind bars were convicted of low-level 
drug or property crimes, rather than violent crimes. Many of them 
were swept up in larger conspiracy prosecutions targeted primarily at 
drug dealers they were living with. Many suffer from mental illness 
or drug addiction. And as is true with men, the racial disparities 
are severe: Black women are locked up at almost three times the rate 
of white women.

A new report by the Prison Policy Initiative quantifies just how 
extreme an outlier the United States is. Thailand is the only country 
with a higher incarceration rate for women than the United States 
over all. But individual states are far worse. West Virginia has the 
highest rate in the world, imprisoning 273 of every 100,000 women, 
with nearly two dozen other states not far behind.

The burdens of incarceration to women are particularly heavy. A large 
percentage of female prisoners have experienced physical and sexual 
abuse in their lives. One 1996 study of California prisoners found 
that 92 percent of women in prison had been abused, and often that 
abuse continues inside prison walls by male guards.

Pregnant women face their own gantlet of humiliation behind bars. In 
28 states, women may be shackled during labor and delivery, and while 
caring for their newborns - a "barbaric" practice that continues 
despite the lack of any evidence that they pose a threat. Most of the 
newborns are immediately separated from their mothers after birth.

And then there is the destructive impact on families. Two-thirds of 
women entering prison have children. If those children are lucky, 
they get placed with their grandparents or other stable, long-term 
caregivers. But many are shipped off to foster homes and bounced for 
years among temporary housing situations, which only makes their path 
to a successful adulthood more difficult.

The cost of imprisonment for nonviolent crimes has severely burdened 
state and federal budgets, with little demonstrated benefit to public 
safety. As the nation struggles with how to shrink its overcrowded 
prisons and jails, low-level and nonviolent offenders are often among 
the first considered for release.

A majority of female prisoners fall into this category, and because 
their imprisonment so often has such a direct and negative impact on 
their families, they should be at the top of the list.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom