Women Prisoners

Women prisoners are no longer an invisible population in the United States. They represent a growing number of those incarcerated nationwide. In recent decades, the number of women imprisoned in state and federal prisons has increased dramatically, rising from 12,000 in 1980 to more than 96,000 in 2002. As of 2002, California, Texas, and the federal prison system held nearly 40% of all women prisoners. In California alone, the female prison population rose from 1,316 in 1980 to more than 10,000 in 2002. In the federal system, the women's prison population increased from 5,011 in 1990 to 11,281 in 2002. Although the current incarceration rate for women continues to be far lower than the rate for men (60 per 100,000 women versus 902 per 100,000 men), the number of women in state and federal prisons since 1980 has increased at a rate nearly double the rate for men. Between 1995 and 2002, the annual rate of growth in the number of female prisoners averaged 5.4%, compared with the 3.6% average increase in the number of male prisoners.

Despite these figures, there does not appear to be a corresponding increase in women's criminality. In 1998, nearly two-thirds of women in state prisons were serving sentences for nonviolent offenses. Women are arrested and incarcerated primarily for property and drug offenses, with drug offenses representing the largest source of the increase in the number of women prisoners in 1998. On the contrary, the proportion of women imprisoned for violent crimes has continued to decrease. In other words, the greater tendency to incarcerate women appears to be the outcome of larger forces that have shaped U.S. crime policy. These include the “war on drugs” and related changes in legislation (e.g., federal and state mandatory sentencing laws), law enforcement practices, and judicial decision making.