[News] More women calling prison home

[News at freedomarchives.org]

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More women calling prison home
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101,179 behind bars last year, U.S. study finds

By Anne Gearan, Associated Press: Tribune news services contributed to this 
report

November 8, 2004

WASHINGTON -- The number of women in state and federal prisons is at an 
all-time high and is growing, with the incarceration rate for female felons 
increasing at nearly twice that of their male counterparts, the government 
reported Sunday.

There were 101,179 women in prisons last year, 3.6 percent more than in 
2002, the Justice Department said. It marks the first time the figure has 
topped 100,000, and continues a trend of rapid growth.

Despite the gain, men are still far more likely than women to be 
imprisoned, with black men the most likely group to be locked up.

At the close of 2003, U.S. prisons held 1,368,866 men, according to the 
department's Bureau of Justice Statistics. The total was 2 percent more 
than in 2002.

Expressed in terms of the population at large, that means in 2003, one in 
every 109 men in the United States was behind bars. For women, the figure 
was one in every 1,613.

Longer sentences, especially for drug crimes, and fewer prisoners getting 
parole or probation are main reasons for the expanding U.S. prison 
population, said Marc Mauer, assistant director of the Sentencing Project.

Mauer's organization advocates alternatives to long prison terms for many 
kinds of crimes.

The government report estimated that 44 percent of state and federal 
prisoners in 2003 were black, compared with 35 percent who were white, 19 
percent who were Hispanic and 2 percent who were of other races. The 
numbers have changed little in the last decade.

The new report compared 2003 figures with those from 1995. The number of 
women in prison has grown 48 percent since 1995, when the figure was 
68,468, according to the review.

It found the male prison population has grown 29 percent over that time, 
from 1,057,406.

The number of women incarcerated grew an average of 5 percent annually, 
compared with a 3.3 percent increase for men.

"It coincides exactly with the inception of the war on drugs," in the 1980s 
and continuing into the 1990s, Mauer said.

"It represents a sort of vicious cycle of women engaged in drug abuse and 
often connected with financial or psychological dependence with a 
boyfriend" or other man involved in drug crime, he said.

The prison figures don't fully reflect the number of people behind bars. 
About 80,000 women were in local jails last year, along with more than 
600,000 men.

The federal prison system held a large share of female prisoners, with a 
population of 11,635 at the close of 2003.

In the state systems, Texas held even more women than the federal prisons, 
with 13,487. California, the nation's largest prison system, held 10,656, 
while North Dakota with 113 held the fewest women in prison.

Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University, said one 
of the most striking findings in the report was that almost 10 percent of 
all American black men ages 25 to 29 were in prison.

Such a high proportion of young black men behind bars not only has a strong 
effect on black families, he said, but "in many ways is self-defeating."

The criminal justice system is built on deterrence, with being sent to 
prison supposedly a stigma, he said. "But it's tough to convey a sense of 
stigma when so many of your friends and neighbors are similarly stigmatized."

Among other findings in the federal report:

- More than 44 percent of all sentenced male inmates were black, many of 
them young.

- At the end of 2003, 9.3 percent of black men aged 25 to 29 were in 
prison, compared with 2.6 percent of Hispanic men and 1.1 percent of white 
men in the same age group.

- In 11 states, there were increases in the prison population of at least 5 
percent, led by North Dakota with an 11.4 percent rise.

- On the other side of the equation, 11 states had decreases. Connecticut 
had the biggest drop, at 4.2 percent.

- Despite longer sentences and more life sentences, the number of elderly 
inmates is small. Those age 65 and older were only 1 percent of the prison 
population in 2003.


Copyright (c) 2004, Chicago Tribune





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