John,

Research on female incarceration is critical to understanding the full consequences of mass incarceration and to unraveling the policies and practices that lead to their criminalization. Today The Sentencing Project released an updated report documenting over a 585% increase in women’s imprisonment in the United States between 1980 and 2022.

While more men are imprisoned than women, the rate of growth for female incarceration is twice as high as that of men since 1980. In 2022, over 975,000 women were under the supervision of the criminal legal system.

The report’s additional highlights:

In 2022, the imprisonment rate for Black women was 1.6 times the rate of imprisonment for white women.
Latina women were imprisoned at 1.2 times the rate of white women.
The rate of imprisonment for Black and Latina women has declined since 2000, while the rate of imprisonment for white women has increased.
Idaho has the highest rate of incarcerated women, while Massachusetts has the lowest.
62% of imprisoned women in state prisons have a child under the age of 18.
Native American and Black girls are much more likely to be incarcerated than white, Latina, or Asian girls.
Almost 25% of incarcerated girls are held for status offenses, such as truancy and curfew violations, or for violating the terms of their probation.