The Unique Needs of Incarcerated Women: One Size Does Not Fit All
The Situation
Growth of Women in Prison and Jails
Women have become the fastest growing segment of the incarcerated population in the last four decades. According to The Sentencing Project, “The female incarcerated population stands almost seven times higher than in 1980. Over 62% of imprisoned women in state prisons have a child under the age of 18. Between 1980 and 2022, the number of incarcerated women increased by more than 585%.”
Men still outnumber by far incarcerated individuals by gender. Women on average only represent the state and federal prison population by approximately 7%. In the jails, the percent of women incarcerated is higher. Women are more likely than men to be serving time in jails once convicted.
“About one-third (32%) of convicted incarcerated women are held in jails, compared to about 13% of all people incarcerated with a conviction.” Women’s offenses are more likely to be drug or property offenses rather than violent offenses and do not warrant state or federal prison. Women will also have different pathways to incarceration than men including being victims of sexual abuse, victims of domestic violence, retaliation from abuse, and the related trauma.
Key Facts from the Vera Institute
82% of jailed women report a history of drug or alcohol abuse or dependency.
Nearly 1/2 of all jailed women are in small counties.
Nearly 80% of women in jail are mothers, and most are single parents.
Significant mental illness affects an estimated 32% of women in jails — more than double the rate among men in jails.
86% of women in jail report having experienced sexual violence in their lifetime.
The vast majority of women are in jail for nonviolent offenses — 32% for property offenses, 29% for drug offenses, and 21% for public order offenses.
Pretrial Detention and Its Dangers
Pretrial detention (those incarcerated waiting months to get a hearing or trial) is a destructive practice for both men and women hurting individuals, children, families, and communities. It is not uncommon for offenders to be jailed for six to 12 months or longer waiting for a hearing.
Approximately 60% of women in jails under local control have not been convicted of a crime and are awaiting trial according to the Prison Policy Initiative. Women are not generally considered a flight risk. The more obvious reason women are detained pretrial is because they cannot afford cash bail because of their low incomes. Cash bail should be eliminated except in the most violent offenses. The Bail Project program data reveals that 91% of offenders “bailed out” by their program return to their court hearings without any of the offender’s money on the line.
Long jail stays have profound consequences for women. Women die at twice the rate in jail than men often caused by drug overdose. And the number of deaths by suicide among women in jails increased by almost 65% between the periods of 2000-2004 and 2015-2019.
Programming Inside Jails and Prisons
Diversion Not Incarceration
The unique population characteristics of women incarcerated, their needs, causes of incarceration, and trajectory to reenter require different programming than men’s programming. Unfortunately, gender specific programs are limited and most programs for the incarcerated are geared toward men. Women also have different hygiene needs than men and these needs are not always being met. To keep this blog short I eliminated a section on hygiene, but for those interested see the Act for the Dignity for Incarcerated Women finalized in 2018 to address the abuses around hygiene products and male correctional officers withholding these products as a form of humiliation, power and control.
“When a mother is incarcerated, that incarceration has an outsized impact,” Elizabeth Swavola, a senior programming associate at the Vera Institute of Justice and the co-author of a 2016 report on the state of women in jails, told Motto. “It can be traumatizing for children to see their mothers on the other side of the glass and not being able to hug them.” It is equally traumatizing to see your mother in a jail jumpsuit instead of civilian clothes, or worse, shackled.
A better alternative for women convicted of non-violent offenses is to create diversion programs and to not incarcerate them at all enabling them to work and be with their children. Programs such as “drug courts” should be implemented more widely across counties in the U.S. Such programs require addiction treatment, drug testing and periodic reporting to court for monitoring while allowing offenders to stay and work in the community and be with family.
Reentry
Specialized Programs
About 95% of persons incarcerated do eventually get out and reenter society. Women have unique needs and have a different collective experience than men in this regard. Women (mothers) often take on the roles of parenting whereas men reentering are mostly not burdened with this role.
Anthropologist Jorja Leap sees this struggle in her book Entry Lessons: The stories of women fighting for their place, their children and their futures after incarceration and asks how we can design reentry services and programs to address the different needs and experiences of women once they are released from incarceration. She has found that most reentry programs designed for men just as the programming on the inside of jails and prisons are designed for men.
“Entry Lessons is the result of Leap’s research into two main questions: What are the differences between men’s and women’s experiences with gangs, incarceration, and reentry, and how can reentry programs and services address those gendered differences to best serve formerly incarcerated women?”
Housing
Women need to find housing that can accommodate their children if they have custody upon reentering. Most reentry programs are not prepared to meet those needs. “Halfway houses are just another form of incarceration,” Leap writes. “Filled with zero tolerance policies, strict benchmarks that must be met, and high financial costs, they dole out punishment instead of healing. They rarely offer trauma-informed care.”
Children and Sole Parenting
Women reentering with children need specialized support systems for this situation. Women’s successes and failures can have more direct impact on children who rely on them. “Women leaving carceral settings are more likely to be the sole caretakers of their children — roughly 60% to 80% of women have minor children, and women are five times more likely than men to have children in foster care or a state agency.” Unfortunately, women coming home from prison get little help rebuilding.
Hope
While reentry programs targeting women may be scarce, there is hope. “A New Way of Life” is such one program. Founded by Susan Burton and her story is told in her book Becoming Ms. Burton: From prison to recovery to leading the fight for incarcerated women.
Additional Reading
→ What Happens When We Support Parents Instead of Sending Them to Prison
