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Title: The Criminalization of Women Author: Chuck Munson Language: en Topics: feminist, prison, United States Source: Retrieved on January 1, 2005 from http://www.cat.org.au/aprop/women.txt
Over a million and a half people are forced to live in cages in America;
approximately 116,000 of those people are women.
At present there is significantly higher growth in the rate of
incarceration of females than of males in the United States. According
to U.S. Department of Justice statistics, in 1980 there were 13,269
women imprisoned throughout the U.S.; by 1995 that number reached
68,477; in 1997 that number exceeds 116,000. Studies suggest the common
profile of the imprisoned female to be a young, single mother with few
marketable skills: a high school dropout who lives below the poverty
level. Seventy-five percent are between the ages of 25 and 34, and an
estimated; ninety percent have an alcohol or drug-related history.
Eighty percent of women are convicted of non-violent drug or property
crimes. The motivation of many of these crimes is often family-related
due to the prevalent social and economic conditions of poverty. Many
women are charged as accessories to crimes committed by male relatives
or companions often without the knowledge of the women.
Many experts attribute the sharp rise in female incarceration rates to
the advent of mandatory minimum sentences for drug law violations.
Convictions on offenses for which defendants used to receive probation
may now result in decades-long imprisonment or even life without the
possibility of parole.
Although a greater number of white women than women of color are
arrested, black women are eight times more likely than white women to be
sent to prison. It is widely believed that black women are
disproportionately represented in the following areas of legal abuse:
“over-arrested, over-indicted, under-defended, and excessively
sentenced.”
Mothers constitute more than eighty percent of the women in prison.
When mothers do time, their children do time with them. Nationwide an
estimated half-million children are separated from their imprisoned
mothers. The decades-long sentences, which are now common, can either
entirely wipe out the reproductive lives of young female prisoners or
prevent them from playing any role in the lives of their children as
they grow from infancy to adulthood. Children of incarcerated mothers
are more prone to become ensnared in the vicious cycle of musical-chairs
foster care, juvenile detention centers, and, ultimately, prison.
Conditions for women in prison are physically and psychologically brutal
in ways particular to women’s prisons. Male guards are typically
assigned to prisons for females, who have great difficulty in defending
themselves physically and legally from sexual coercion and assault,
which is common and which routinely results in pregnancy.