[Pnews] Women's Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2017
Prisoner News
ppnews at freedomarchives.org
Thu Oct 19 16:40:54 EDT 2017
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2017women.html
Women's Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2017
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By Aleks Kajstura <https://www.prisonpolicy.org/staff.html#kajstura>
October 19, 2017
With growing public attention to the problem of mass incarceration,
people want to know about women’s experience with incarceration. How
many women are held in prisons, jails, and other correctional facilities
in the United States? And why are they there? While these are important
questions, finding those answers requires not only disentangling the
country’s decentralized and overlapping criminal justice systems, but
also unearthing the frustratingly hard to find and often altogether
missing data on gender.
This report provides a first-of-its-kind detailed view of the 219,000
women incarcerated in the United States, and how they fit into the even
larger picture of correctional control. Since 2014, the Prison Policy
Initiative has quantified the number of people incarcerated in the
United States, and calculated the breakdown of people held by each
correctional system by offense in an annual Whole Pie: Mass
Incarceration <https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2017.html>
report. This report, done in collaboration with the ACLU’s Campaign for
Smart Justice, finally provides similar data on women incarcerated in
the Unites States. We break the data down to show the various
correctional systems that control women, and to examine /why/ women in
the various systems of confinement are locked up:
pie chart showing the number of women locked up on a given day in the
United States by facility type and the underlying offense using the
newest data available in 2017
In stark contrast to the total incarcerated population, where the state
prison systems hold twice as many people as are held in jails,
/incarcerated women are nearly evenly split between state prisons and
local jails/.
The explanation for exactly what happened, when, and why does not yet
exist because the data on women has long been obscured by the larger
picture of men’s incarceration. The disaggregated numbers presented here
are an important first step to ensuring that women are not left behind
in the effort to end mass incarceration.
Women are disproportionately stuck in jails
A staggering number of women who are incarcerated are not even
convicted: more than a quarter of women who are behind bars have not yet
had a trial. /Moreover, 60% of women in jail have not been convicted of
a crime and are awaiting trial./
Avoiding pre-trial incarceration is uniquely challenging for women. The
number of unconvicted women stuck in jail is surely not because courts
are considering women, who are generally the primary caregivers of
children <https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/05/08/mothers-day/>, to
be a flight risk. The far more likely answer is that incarcerated women,
who have lower incomes than incarcerated men, have an even harder time
affording cash bail. A previous study found
<https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/incomejails.html> that women who
could not make bail had an annual median income of just $11,071. And
among those women, Black women had a median annual income of only $9,083
(just 20% that of a white non-incarcerated man). When the typical
$10,000 bail amounts to a full year’s income, it’s no wonder that women
are stuck in jail awaiting trial.
Even once convicted, the system funnels women into jails: About a
quarter of convicted incarcerated women are held in jails, compared to
about 10% of all people incarcerated with a conviction.
So what does it mean that large numbers of women are held in jail - for
them, and for their families? While stays in jail are generally shorter
than in stays in prison, jails make it harder to stay in touch with
family than prisons do. Phone calls are more expensive, up to $1.50 per
minute <https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/01/19/intrastate/>, and
other forms of communication are more restricted - some jails don’t even
allow real letters, limiting mail to postcards
<https://www.prisonpolicy.org/postcards/>. This is especially troubling
given that 80% of women in jails are mothers
<https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/05/08/mothers-day/>, and most of
them are primary caretakers of their children. Thus children are
particularly susceptible to the domino effect of burdens
<http://www.aecf.org/m/resourcedoc/aecf-asharedsentence-2016.pdf#page=5>
placed on incarcerated women.
Women in jails are also more likely to suffer from mental health
problems and experience serious psychological distress than either women
in prisons or men in either correctional setting.
Ending mass incarceration requires looking at all offenses
The numbers revealed by this report enable a national conversation about
the policies that impact incarcerated women held in various facilities,
and also serve as the foundation for discussions to change the policies
that lead to incarcerating women in the first place.
All too often, the conversation about criminal justice reform starts and
stops with the question of non-violent drug and property offenses. While
drug and property offenses make up more than half of the offenses for
which women are incarcerated, the chart reveals that all offenses,
including violent offenses that account for roughly a quarter of all
incarcerated women, must be considered in the effort to reduce the
number of incarcerated women in this country. This new data on women
underlines the need for reform discussions to focus not just on the
easier choices but on choices that can lead to impactful policy changes.
The tentacles of mass incarceration have a long reach
Even the “Whole Pie” of incarceration above represents just one small
portion (16%) of the women under correctional supervision. Again, this
is in stark contrast to the general incarcerated population (mostly
men), where a full third of those under correctional control are in
prisons and jails.
pie chart showing that women in correctional facilities make up only 16%
of the women under correctional control in the United States. Most (75%)
are on probation. The remainder are on paroleThree out of four women
under control of the correctional systems are on probation. Probation is
often billed as an alternative to incarceration, but instead it is
frequently set with unrealistic conditions that undermine its goal of
keeping people from being locked up. For example, probation often comes
with steep fees, which, like bail, women are in the worst position to
afford. Failing to pay these probation fees is often a violation of
probation. Childcare duties further complicate probation requirements
that might require meetings with probation officers, with no extra money
to spend on babysitters or reliable fast transportation across town. All
of these issues make women particularly vulnerable to being incarcerated
not because they commit crimes, but because they ran afoul of one of the
burdensome obligations of their probation supervision.
The picture of women’s incarceration is far from complete, and many
questions remain about mass incarceration’s unique impact on women.
Based on our analysis in this report we know that a quarter of
incarcerated women are unconvicted. But is that number growing? And how
does that undue incarceration load intersect with women’s
disproportionate caregiving burdens to impact families? Beyond these big
picture questions there are a plethora of detailed data points that are
not reported for women by any government agencies, such as the simple
number of women incarcerated in U.S. Territories.
While more data is needed, the data in this report lends focus and
perspective to the policy changes needed to end mass incarceration
without leaving women behind.
Read about the data
This briefing uses the most recent data available on the number of
people in various types of facilities and the most significant charge or
conviction. Because not all types of data are collected each year, we
sometimes had to combine differing data sets; for example, we applied
the percentage distribution of offense types from the previous year to
the current year’s total count data. To smooth out these differing
levels of vintage and precision among the sources, we choose to round
all figures in the graphic. This process may, however, result in various
parts not adding up precisely to the total.
* *Jails:* Calculated based on the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Jail
Inmates in 2015 <https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ji15.pdf>,
Table 3 (average of yearend 2014 and midyear 2015). The Bureau of
Justice Statistics has stopped collecting data on the conviction
status of women in jails in 2009, so we calculated the breakdown
based on 2009 data published in the Jail Inmates at Midyear 2013 -
Statistical Tables
<https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/jim13st.pdf>. Our analysis of
offense types is based on the Survey Of Inmates In Local Jails, 2002
<https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=dcdetail&iid=274>. See below
<#jailadjust> and Who is in jail? Deep dive
<https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2015/12/08/who-is-in-jail-deep-dive/>
for why we used our own analysis rather than the otherwise excellent
Bureau of Justice Statistics analysis of the same dataset, Profiles
of Jail Inmates, 2002
<https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/pji02.pdf>. While this
methodology section illustrates the pervasive dearth of women’s
criminal justice data, this 2002 data continues to be the most
recent data available of its kind without regard to gender
breakdown, until the Bureau of Justice Statistics begins
administering the next Survey of Inmates in Local Jails in 2018
<https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/siljdatsol.pdf>.
* *Immigration detention:* Calculated based on the United States
Government Accountability Office Report to Congressional Requesters,
Immigration Detention: Additional Actions Could Strengthen DHS
Efforts to Address Sexual Abuse
<http://www.gao.gov/assets/660/659145.pdf>, which reports that women
made up 9% of the 2012 fiscal year detainee population, and the
total number of detainees (41,000) comes from page 7 of Report of
the Subcommittee on Privatized Immigration Detention Facilities
<https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/DHS%20HSAC%20PIDF%20Final%20Report.pdf>,
December 1, 2016, by the Homeland Security Advisory Council. In
November 2016, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it
was seeking additional (but unspecified) incarceration capacity
<https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/11/10/statement-secretary-johnson-southwest-border-security>,
so this 41,000 number has likely already grown. The impact of the
current administration’s increased ICE activities on the total
population, let alone women, is not yet known.
* *Federal:* Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 2015
<https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p15.pdf>, Table 10, reports
percentage breakdown of offense types for the convicted population
as of September 30, 2015, and the total population of women reported
in Table 2, for December 31, 2015. We did not attempt to separate
out convicted and unconvicted from the federal slice of the pie and
instead proportionally applied the offenses for the convicted
population to the unconvicted population.
* *State Prisons:* Prisoners in 2015
<https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p15.pdf>, Table 2 provides the
gender breakdown for the total population as of December 31st, 2015,
and Table 9 provides data (as of December 31, 2014) that we used to
calculate the ratio of different offense types.
* *Military:* The latest gender breakdown we could find was in
Correctional Populations in the United States, 1998
<https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpus98.pdf>, Table 8.5, which
reported the number of prisoners under military jurisdiction, by
officer and enlisted status, gender, race, and Hispanic origin, for
December 31, 1998. We calculated the number of women for our
military slice by imputing the percentages from 1998 to the numbers
reported in Prisoners in 2015
<https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p15.pdf>, Appendix Table 7,
which gives the number of people incarcerated in by each branch of
the military, but does not provide a gender breakdown.
* *Territorial Prisons* (correctional facilities in the U.S.
Territories of American Samoa, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands,
and U.S. Commonwealths of Northern Mariana Islands and Puerto Rico):
Calculated based on World Prison Brief
<http://www.prisonstudies.org/world-prison-brief-data> data
reporting the most recent data available, ranging from 2007
(Northern Mariana Islands) to 2015 (Puerto Rico).
* *Youth:* Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Easy
Access to the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement
<https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/ezacjrp/asp/selection.asp>,
reporting data for 2015. To keep things comparable with the other
parts of the pie, we choose to include only those youth in detention
centers, long-term secure facilities, and reception/diagnostic
centers. We did not include other placements outside the home.
* *Civil Commitment* (At least 20 states and the federal government
operate facilities for the purposes of detaining people convicted of
sexual crimes after their sentences are complete. These facilities
and the confinement there are technically civil, but in reality are
quite like prisons. People under civil commitment are held in
custody continuously from the time they start serving their sentence
at a correctional facility through their confinement in the civil
facility.): The Sex Offender Civil Commitment Programs Network
conducts an annual survey, and the civil commitment data came from
an email with SOCCPN President Shan Jumper on May 11, 2017,
estimating that there were 6 or 7 women total, nationally (based on
the SOCCPN 2016 Annual Survey). And according to the Common
Questions about Civil Commitment as a Sexually Violent Person
<http://soccpn.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/FAQ_SOCCPN.pdf>
(Adopted by the ATSA and the Sex Offender Civil Commitment Programs
Network Executive Boards of Directors on October 13, 2015), there
are “a few women throughout the country who have been committed.”
* *Indian Country* (correctional facilities operated by tribal
authorities or the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of
Indian Affairs): Bureau of Justice Statistics’ Jails in Indian
Country, 2015 <https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/jic15.pdf>, Table
5, reporting data for midyear, 2015.
* *Probation and Parole:* Our counts of women incarcerated and under
community supervision are from Correctional Populations in the
United States, 2015
<https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpus15.pdf>, Appendix Table 3,
reporting data for December 31, 2015. In order to break out
community supervision between Probation and Parole, we used
Probation and Parole in the United States, 2015
<https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ppus15.pdf> for the percentage
of women in the Parole and Probation population. (Table 6 for Parole
and Table 4 for Probation) and applied that ratio to the totals
reported in CSAT (these numbers are the numbers that appear,
rounded, in table 1 of CPUS). We then adjusted those numbers to
ensure that people with multiple statuses were counted only once in
their most restrictive category. (Because gender-specific data on
people with more than one correctional status was not available, we
reduced the number of women on probation and on parole by the ratio
(3.54% for parole and 1.64% for probation) we used for Mass
Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2017
<https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2017.html>). For readers
interested in knowing the total number of people on parole and
probation, ignoring any double-counting with other forms of
correctional control, there are 113,200 women on parole and 947,400
women on probation.
Several data definitions and clarifications may be helpful to
researchers reusing this data in new ways:
* To avoid double-counting women held in local jails on behalf of the
Bureau of Prisons, ICE, U.S. Marshals Service, state, and other
prison authorities from being counted twice, we removed the 7,763
women from the jail population reported by the BJS and from the
numbers we used to calculate the number of convicted women in local
jails. Our calculation for the number of women held in such
arrangements was based on data reported for the total number of
people held in jails for federal and state authorities in Appendix
Table 2 of Prisoners in 2015
<https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p15.pdf>, and total number of
people held in jails for ICE, from page 7 of Report of the
Subcommittee on Privatized Immigration Detention Facilities
<https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/DHS%20HSAC%20PIDF%20Final%20Report.pdf>,
December 1, 2016, by the Homeland Security Advisory Council and the
2002 Survey Of Inmates In Local Jails, 2002
<https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=dcdetail&iid=274>, where our
analysis showed that about 8.5% of those held in such arrangements
were women.
* Because we removed ICE detainees and people under the jurisdiction
of federal and state authorities from the jail population, we had to
recalculate the offense distribution reported in Survey Of Inmates
In Local Jails, 2002
<https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=dcdetail&iid=274> who were
“convicted” or “not convicted” without the people who reported that
they were being held on behalf of state authorities, the Federal
Bureau of Prisons or U.S. Immigration and Naturalization
Service/U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Our
definition of “convicted” was those who reported that they were “To
serve a sentence in this jail,” “To await sentencing for an
offense,” or “To await transfer to serve a sentence somewhere else”.
Our definition of not convicted was “To stand trial for an offense,”
“To await arraignment,” or “To await a hearing for revocation of
probation/parole or community release”.
* We also accounted for women held in federal pre-trial detention who
are confined in facilities other than federal and state prisons. We
found 1,536 women held by, or for, the U.S. Marshals Service. Census
of Jails: Population Changes, 1999-2013
<https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cjpc9913.pdf> Table 13 reports
that 848 women are in Federal Bureau of Prisons detention centers
and we estimate that another 688 are in private facilities
contracted out to the U.S. Marshals Service. We included these 1,536
women total in the Federal Prisons slice of the pie.
* Additionally, a significant portion of the jail population is not in
fact under local jurisdiction, but is in a local jail under contract
with the U.S. Marshals Service. This population, which in 2013 was
26,176 for both men and women consists of both people who are
awaiting trial, and those who are convicted but have not yet been
sentenced, so they appear in both the convicted and unconvicted
local jail slices. This is part of why, for example, our total pie
chart <https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2017.html> shows
1,000 people “serving” sentences in jails for murder when murder is
typically an offense that warrants much longer sentences than would
be served in a jail. We have not yet developed a way to separately
identify and describe this population, let alone disentangle which
portion of the reported numbers is women. (Similarly, in 2013, the
Marshals Service had about 10,000 people - mostly in states that do
not have separate jail systems - in state prisons for the same
reasons.) We hope to, in future versions of this report, develop
more detailed ways to display and describe this population.
* Lastly, the youth slice does not include 333 girls held in adult
jails and prisons. There are 300 girls under the age of 17 held in
local jails (calculated by comparing the adult female and total
female population reported in Table 3 of Bureau of Justice
Statistics Jail Inmates in 2015
[https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ji15.pdf]), and 33 girls under
the age of 18 held in state or federal prisons (as reported by the
Bureau of Justice Statistics Quick Table, Reported number of inmates
under age 18 held in custody in federal or state prisons
<https://www.bjs.gov/nps/resources/documents/QT_less%20than%2018%20year%20olds_female.xlsx>
[XLS], December 31, 2000-2015).
* Separately, note that we did not include a breakdown of the slices
by race or ethnicity, because that data does not exist. All
together, however, incarcerated women are 53% White, 28.6% Black,
14.2% Hispanic, 2.5% American Indian and Alaskan Native, 0.9% Asian,
and 0.4% Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander.
See the footnotes
Acknowledgements
This report was made possible by the partnership of the ACLU Campaign
for Smart Justice, the support of the Public Welfare Foundation, and all
of the donors, researchers, programmers and designers who helped the
Prison Policy Initiative develop the Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie
<https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2017.html> series of reports.
The ACLU wishes to thank John Cutler, Udi Ofer, and Adina Ellis for
their assistance with this report.
About the author
Aleks Kajstura is Legal Director of the Prison Policy Initiative. Her
previous publications on women’s incarceration include States of Women’s
Incarceration: The Global Context
<https://www.prisonpolicy.org/global/women/>.
About the Prison Policy Initiative
The non-profit non-partisan Prison Policy Initiative was founded in 2001
to expose the broader harm of mass criminalization and spark advocacy
campaigns to create a more just society. The organization is most
well-known for its big-picture publication Mass Incarceration: The Whole
Pie <https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2017.html> that helps the
public more fully engage in criminal justice reform.
Creative Commons License <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/>
This report is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/>
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