Since you asked: What role does drug enforcement play in the rising incarceration of women?

Women are being jailed at higher rates than ever. We explore whether drug arrests and substance abuse could be having an impact.

by Tiana Herring

After skyrocketing for decades, overall incarceration rates have finally been on a slow decline since 2008. But a closer look at the data reveals a major exception: women. From 2009 to 2018, the number of women in city and county jails increased by 23% — a rise that effectively cancelled out more than 40% of the simultaneous 7.5% decrease in the men’s jail population. Meanwhile, reductions in state and federal prison populations have mostly affected men.

Women make up about 10% of people in jails and prisons. This means that patterns unique to women’s incarceration are easily obscured when we focus exclusively on the larger, overall incarcerated population. And when we overlook incarcerated women as a unique group, we also fail to address the additional challenges they face — including different health care needs and a greater likelihood of being a primary caretaker of young children — that make their growing numbers all the more alarming.

Since public health research shows that women are also affected in unique ways by the opioid crisis, we decided to see whether drug enforcement trends and substance abuse could be contributing to the rising number of women behind bars.

Increased drug arrests for women

Over the past 35 years, total arrests have risen 15% for women, while decreasing 40% for men. The increase among women is largely driven by drugs: During that period, drug related arrests increased nearly 190% for women, compared to 34% for men.

Changes in policing in the 1990s contributed to this rise. The shift toward “broken windows” policing — or arresting people for minor offenses to supposedly prevent major crime — resulted in increased arrests for both men and women. But these policies particularly affected women, who are more likely to be involved in relatively minor drug crimes like simple possession than higher-level drug offenses.

More than a quarter of women in jail are held for drug crimes, which holds true for both convicted and unconvicted women. (Another 32 percent are held for property offenses, which are often linked to drug dependence and abuse.) In state prisons as well, the share of women incarcerated for drug and property crimes is greater than for their male counterparts.

Where are the increases in women’s incarceration happening?

We looked to see if the increase in women’s incarceration was driven by rising arrests in rural areas, where the opioid crisis has hit particularly hard. But we found that women’s drug arrests were actually up in all county types over the last decade (by 25% in rural, 23% in urban, and 26% in suburban counties).

We also checked to see if there was a significant change in white women’s incarceration, since the current opioid epidemic is widely viewed as a white issue. Here we did find a relevant trend: Although prison and jail incarceration rates remain higher for Black and Hispanic women than for white women, incarceration is particularly on the rise among white women. From 2010 to 2019, overall prison incarceration rates for white women increased by 2% — while simultaneously decreasing for white men, Black men, Hispanic men, Black women, and Hispanic women. When we look back a decade further, which captures the beginning of the prescription drug crisis, the gender disparity in growth was even greater: Incarceration rates increased 38% for white women and 28% for Hispanic women from 2000 to 2010, compared to 2% and 3% for white and Hispanic men, respectively.

We also found that growth in women’s incarceration is primarily happening at the jail level. Unlike incarcerated men, incarcerated women are more likely to be in county or city jails than in state or federal prison. Most of these jailed women (60%) have not been convicted of a crime and are being held pretrial, often because they cannot afford bail. This isn’t surprising when you consider that most women held on bond have incomes that fall below the poverty line.

Trends in addiction among women

Knowing that drug arrests are on the rise, we looked to see if addiction is increasing among women, particularly opioid abuse. We found that although women and men are equally likely to develop a substance use disorder, 57% of those misusing opioids are women. The health toll is enormous: Women entered emergency rooms due to painkiller misuse an average of once every three minutes in 2010. Women’s rising opioid use is also reflected in an almost 600% increase in opioid overdose deaths from 1999 to 2016, compared to a 312% increase for men over the same time frame.

Researchers find that women may be more likely to receive opioid prescriptions due to a variety of factors: Women are more likely to seek out health care, go to the doctor regularly, and report experiencing pain, including chronic pain. Health care providers are also more likely to miss signs of addiction in women. (Disparate access to health care may also contribute to the rise in the incarceration of white women specifically. White people, who have higher rates of access to health insurance and physicians, were more likely to become addicted to prescription drugs like OxyContin than Black and Hispanic people.)

Drug dependence is also more pronounced among incarcerated women than incarcerated men. The most recent data available show that in 2009, around 70% of women serving sentences in prisons and jails struggled with drug abuse and dependence. And from 2004 to 2009, drug abuse and dependence among women in state prisons grew at twice the rate of men.

Additional challenges for incarcerated women

The growing number of incarcerated women face unique challenges that prisons and jails aren’t equipped to address. Incarcerated women are more likely to have a history of abuse, trauma, and mental health problems than incarcerated men. One-third of women in jails, for example, report experiencing serious psychological distress in the past 30 days. Women may also have additional health considerations, including pregnancy and reproductive health concerns.

Incarceration also has devastating effects on the families of incarcerated women. The majority of women in prisons and jails are mothers to minor children, and most incarcerated mothers were their children’s primary caretaker before their incarceration. The trauma of having a parent incarcerated leaves lasting negative impacts on children, and parental incarceration can cause financial instability for families.

For the sake of incarcerated women and their families, more needs to be done to understand the continued rise in women’s incarceration — and to make sure reforms impact women as well as men.