Women in Prison

Profile of the Female Offender

The typical female inmate in the United States is a woman of color between twenty-four and twenty-nine, incarcerated either for a drug or property crime. She was raised in a single-parent home from which she ran away at least once. Between the ages of five and fourteen, she was likely to have been the victim of sexual abuse and to have witnessed violence at home. She started using drugs by the time she was thirteen or fourteen, dropped out of high school, and left home before the age of seventeen. She has received government assistance and is likely to have been involved with prostitution and to have been a victim of domestic abuse at some point in her life. A single parent, she has never married and has two children who are living with her mother or another relative while she is incarcerated. She plans to maintain custody of her children and live with them after her release. She is typically released with no money, no job, court fines, a criminal record, and children to support. She has been incarcerated before and will probably be sent to jail again.

Who Gets Incarcerated

Incarcerated women report experiences of childhood physical and sexual abuse at a rate higher than women in the general population, and studies show that 60 to 80 percent of the female prison population has suffered adult physical, sexual, or domestic abuse as well. Most women in prison are poor and under-educated; about half finished [Page 1730]high school and more than half were unemployed at the time of their arrest. Minorities are overrepresented: In 1999, black women were seven times more likely to be incarcerated than white women, and Hispanic women three times more likely. Although minorities are not the only women in society who suffer physical, sexual, and domestic abuse or who use drugs, women of color and low socioeconomic status tend to be under more police surveillance (especially if they have been in jail before), and are less likely to be able to afford therapy, bail, or a private attorney. Consequently, they are more likely to be incarcerated as a result of their criminal activity. The fact that they are overwhelmingly poor and subject to institutional racism and sexism in society and in the criminal justice system influences the “choices” they make. Their status as marginalized citizens in society often leads them to jail, while women in the middle and upper classes tend to have many more options for managing and concealing their problems.

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