Jail reform urgently needed to address women's incarceration
Prison Policy Initiative updates for October 29, 2019 Showing how mass incarceration harms communities and our national welfare
New report, Women’s Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2019, reveals how many women are locked up in the U.S., where, and why [[link removed]] The report highlights the need for reforms to local jails, which now hold more women than state prisons do. [[link removed]]
A new report we released this morning, in collaboration with the ACLU Campaign for Smart Justice, presents the most recent and comprehensive data on how many women are locked up in the U.S., where, and why.
Women in the U.S. experience a dramatically different criminal justice system than men do, but data on their experiences is difficult to find and put into context. The new edition of Women's Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie [[link removed]], which the Prison Policy Initiative and ACLU have published every year since 2017, fills this gap with four richly-annotated data visualizations about women behind bars.
"Producing this big-picture view of incarcerated women helps us see why many recent criminal justice reforms are failing to reduce women's incarceration," said report author Aleks Kajstura. Most importantly, the new report underscores the need for reforms to local jails:
More incarcerated women are held in local jails than in state prisons, in stark contrast to incarcerated men, meaning that reforms that only impact people in prison will not benefit them. The number of women in local jails grew between 2016 and 2017 — a trend that reflects counties' growing reliance on jails to solve social problems. Women convicted of criminal offenses are more likely than men to be serving their sentences in local jails, where healthcare and rehabilitative programs are much harder to access than in prisons. On any given night, 4,500 immigrant women are held for ICE in local jails — nearly half of the 7,700 women held in immigration detention.
The report goes on to explain why 231,000 women are locked up in the U.S.:
73% of women in prisons and jails are locked up for nonviolent offenses, in contrast to only 57% of all people in prisons and jails (who are almost entirely men). 10% of girls in the juvenile justice system — compared to only 3% of boys — are held for status offenses like running away, truancy, or "incorrigibility," which would not be crimes if committed by adults. 27% of women in prisons and jails are locked up for violent offenses, including acts of violence committed in self-defense.
Beyond presenting new data, Women's Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2019 [[link removed]] also reviews the existing literature on women's incarceration, including the Prison Policy Initiative's prior research on gender disparities in police contact, [[link removed]] women's access to reentry services [[link removed]] after incarceration, and the incomes of women in prisons [[link removed]] and jails. [[link removed]]
Read the full report: [[link removed]]
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Our work is made possible by private donations. Can you help us keep going? We can accept tax-deductible gifts online [[link removed]] or via paper checks sent to PO Box 127 Northampton MA 01061. Thank you!
Other news: Ending women’s mass incarceration will require local jail reform. Where should counties start? [[link removed]]
It's up to counties to reduce the vast number of women held in local jails every night. Our 2019 report Does our county really need a bigger jail? [[link removed]] provides a handy guide to jail reform, laying out 33 questions that reveal who is in your county jail and whether they truly need to be behind bars.
Read our full report. [[link removed]]
Please support our work [[link removed]]
Our work is made possible by private donations. Can you help us keep going? We can accept tax-deductible gifts online [[link removed]] or via paper checks sent to PO Box 127 Northampton MA 01061. Thank you!
Our other newsletters Ending prison gerrymandering ( archives [[link removed]]) Criminal justice research library ( archives) [[link removed]]
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