This is an interesting piece on prisons in the US(they are just great aren't they) not being able to meet the needs of their growing female inmate population.
Women are the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. prison population, a trend fueled by their growing involvement in drug crimes and by longer sentences in general. But once behind bars, their needs are often overlooked because of tight budgets and the attention given to sex offenders and death-row inmates, advocates say.
Prison and jail officials from around the country are to gather this weekend in Bloomington to address the rising number of incarcerated women - more than 180,000 in prisons and jails nationwide, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Those are some pretty intense stats. Check this to see what some folks are doing in terms of advocating for women inmate's rights.
Why do we think there has been a growth in female inmates? And what race, class and gender is being the most represented in this growing population?
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Might I ask how 'longer sentences' equates to women being a fastest growing population? It wouldn't. Here, O hideous hysterical lesbos, your lack of causal thought and logic is brutally on display, just as your mannish bear-like faces every time you haul your Lovecraftian bulk before the eyes of an unprepared world. Being undersireable is no solid basis for a philosophy or political movement. We know damn well most of you do not even vaguely resemble the nice piece of ass mascot in the top right corner there; most of you are swine, like Dworking The Decaying Whale, and your penis envy makes me want to cry.
Women are landing in jail more often because they are becoming more violent, in keeping with the example set by feminist Hollywood. Feminism: no friend of Woman.
It is, however, friend of the catfood industry. Die sad, old and lonely like your forebears, you horrible horrible vampires. Read Dowd! That is your future. "WAAA NO MAN WANTS ME! WAAAAAH!"
Wow, thanks "Crazy Dyke" for the double post.
You may have noticed the cited article made the point you criticized, not the blogger you're harassing.
Also, in keeping with the tone you've set, I should mention you're a pretty big asshole, and are propably so pissed off at feminism in general because some feminist once told you she had higher standards than filth like you.
Move along, please.
Now that I'm done saying that, with regard to the article:
My thoughts: More women are being put in prisons because Prisons want more people to work as slave labour. Female institutions have yet to be exploited to the same extent as male ones, so there's a demand for a bigger prison population. It's the market at work.
Labyrus-
That part didn't even occur to me. Too true that women have yet to be fully exploited through the prison industrial complex.
CD--did you seriously just hit us with the 'feminists are ugly' insult? yawn. can't you do any better than that?
Part of it may be the 3 strikes laws.
One of my patients had two marijuana possessions from the early 70s (considered felonies then). She shoplifted $50 worth of makeup from a store in the late 90s during a manic episode. In between, she'd had no problems, had a job, a husband, and kids. Because of the charges 20 years ago, she went to jail for a YEAR, lost her job, lost a year of her kids' lives, and caused major problems in her marriage.
She was not a danger to society. Both she AND the community would have been much better off with community service and a large fine, or even in-home incarceration.
Of course, this is only one incident. But I think there is less desire to rehabilitate and more desire to punish than there used to be.
It has been observed by those who study such matters that the increase in female incarceration is mainly due to relatively recent mandatory sentencing guidelines, which remove sentencing discretion from judges who previously may have been more lenient with female offenders
yo... CD is off his rocker ('cos yo, i can't believe a woman wrote that vapid bull palonky)...
first off, the women i know who write for feministing are foooine...
second off, here's a pdf little research jobby (just 3 pages) about female incarceration... note that 50% of women in NY state's prison system are in there for drug offences. even property crimes have gone down according to this outdated DOJ study ('cos, well, the gov't ain't that on point about number crunching - 'specially when it makes 'em look bad)...
oh, yeah, and a little 2005 fact sheet from the Correctional Association of New York's Women in Prison Project. finally, here's a link to the Drug Policy Alliance's page on women in prison (well, i used to work for 'em, what can i say?), finally, a great resource on prison activism.
stuff's crazy... and like labyrus pointed out, certainly a fair amount of it is due to the burgeoning prison labor market (ever wonder where a lot of the phone operators you speak to are from?)... you can't forget, too, that as large agricultural corporations deprive rural communities of their livelihoods, more of them tend to lobby for getting prisons built in their neighborhoods because of the resource those prisons represent (in terms of employment, taxes, etc.)
you've got to realize, too, that the conditions women prisoners live under are, on the whole, worse than those men prisoners live under... the incidence of guard sexual misconduct, rationing of tampons, restriction of access to medical care check out LSPC for more on this, restriction of access to family (nearly 1/4 of female inmates have given birth in prison)...
i remember, in college, working with a group that was putting together a health manual for women in prison and, well, suffice it to say that most of the stuff in the manual was about how to get proper care from the ridiculously difficult shitstem...
yeah, so most women are going to prison for drug-related crimes - which, no doubt, has to do with mandatory minimum sentencing fueled in part by the way parlortrickshans use 'tough on crime' as an easy road to election and part by prison guard unions, profiteers of prison labor and disenfranchised rural communities.
women may be committing more drug-related crimes because of the severe cuts in resources available to poor mothers, not to mention the severe cuts in resources available to women with mental/emotional disorders (women in prison are about twice as likely as men in prison to have been diagnosed with such a condition)... and i have no doubt that this trend has something to do with the fact that 44% of women in the (un)justice shitstem have reported physical or sexual abuse...
as far as the race and class of women in prison... well, according to LSPC...
205 in 100,000 african-american women
60 in 100,000 latina women
34 in 100,000 white women
get locked up each year (refers to the Bureau of Justice Statistics year 2000 numbers - i didn't want to do the number crunching for 2002...)
i'm finding it harder to find information on class distribution, but i'm certain that if you follow through some of the links i've posted you can find something... also, this book:
Chigwada-Bailey, Ruth. Black Women’s Experiences of the Criminal Justice: A Discourse on Disadvantage. Waterside Press, 1997.
apparently addresses class in its treatment of criminal injustice...
okay... nuff for tonight... thanks for brining up this poignant subject sami... yeah... and big ups to anyone who ends up following some/all of the links above and doing something about this crazy violent gendericide. even just getting a penpal who's locked up would do a world of good for someone...
peace and blessings
oh, yeah, and i wanted to point something else out about the first comment...
this is how longer sentences translates into a balooning prison population:
if every person who gets convicted serves 1 year and 10 people get convicted each year, after 15 years, you have 10 people in prison (because the other 135 have already served their terms)...
if every person who gets convicted serves 15 years and 10 people get convicted each year, after 15 years, you have 150 people in prison (because the first 10 people are still serving their last year)
that's just a little simple math... it's like word problem... so all y'all chauvanist pigs can go back to study with some dope female math teachers who can maybe even show you a little something about spacial relation skills.
dumbasses.
shit... first bit... the other "140"... man... it's late...
Isn't this just "social justice?"
Isn't this just "social justice?"
Women are becoming more violent (like men), more promiscuous (like men), more accepting of sexual objectification (like men), so it comes as no surprise to many of us that more of them will begin to end up in prison, like men.
hey, walt, did you even read the first link you posted, which clearly states that, despite studies dating from 1975 through the 1980s which presupposed that women's liberation would lead to increased criminality...
is there anything mysterious about that?
and:
For serious violent offences (robbery, aggravated assault or murder)... the rate for women remained stable, while that for men increased.
and:
It has been suggested that part of the increase is because Canadian society, along with others, has become less tolerant of violence and consequently more willing to press charges for violent behaviour, particularly the less serious threats or assaults
further, this sounds a bit like fishing for a way to tie increasing incarceration rates to women's liberation (even that study you cited is a bit silly.) the study itself states that the majority of women incarcerated do not see the visceral effects of women's liberation.
that's not "social justice," that's criminalizing poverty... and criminalizing mental illness... i used to work in a drug treatment center and i can tell you off the bat that a huge percentage of problem drug users are considered "dual diagnosis" (meaning substance addiction and mental illness diagnoses) - if you consider that the overwhelming majority of increase in women prison populations is due to the war on drugs, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that this is due to (a) physical and sexual abuse of women and (b) lack of resources for people with mental illness.
oh, yeah, and as far as the "accepting of sexual objectification," if men were acception of sexual objectification of men, i'm sure we'd see much better-looking men out there. not to mention that there wouldn't be so much out-and-out male homophobia ('cos even mostly-straight guys like me would feel comfortable saying "that guy looks cute").
unfortunately, that's not the case... so it seems that both men and women are becoming more accepting of women being objectified (if that assertion even holds any water), which really has nothing to do with liberation at all.
so get off your bullshit high horse and pay a little more attention. and while you're at it, why don't you take a look at what amnesty international usa has to say about women in prison. you make me feel ashamed to be a man and i should never feel that way...