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. The number of incarcerated women was over seven times higher in 2019 than in 1980, according to a data analysis released today by The Sentencing Project. Incarcerated Women and Girls examines pre-pandemic female incarceration trends and finds areas of both concern and hope. While the imprisonment rate for African American women was nearly twice that of white women in 2019, this disparity represents a sharp decline from 2000 when Black women were six times as likely to be imprisoned. Since then Black women’s imprisonment rate has decreased by 60% while white women’s rate has increased by 41%. Similar to adults, girls of color are more likely to be incarcerated than white girls. Native girls are more than four times as likely, and African American girls are more than three times as likely as white girls to be incarcerated. Click here to read the fact sheet. | |
