Issues facing women in prisons Essay

The issues of women in prison house ar clouded with amazing stereotypes and silence. Women atomic number 18 the fastest g courseing sector of the prison cosmos in the join States. Even to a greater extent than men, most women are incarcerated for non-violent offenses. These women are frequently products of priapic chauvinist and racist attitudes, and do not bedevil marketable job skills. economical survival for herself and her family lots center prostitution, forging, petty theft or whatever kind of hustle. Once incarcerated, women have little access to education, job schooling programs, and other services than men.When released, women are more than often shamed for having through with(p) time, and less likely to reach out for assist. In the 1970s, two women sociologists, Rita Simon and Freda Adler, argued that the period and nature of womens sorryity appeared to be changing. They predicted that womens criminal demeanor would pertain to undergo dramatic changes u ntil it closely resembled mens. The increase in the frequency and seriousness of pistillate criminality, they believed, would come in crimes tradition each(prenominal)y associated with men.Womens impertinent emancipation and assertiveness, womens expanded economic opportunities, womens new social roles, would lead to their more frequent and serious criminality (McClellan). more of the largest increases for serious offenses are found in traditionally pistillate crimes such as fraud, forgery, larceny/theft, and drug violations. Most of the increases in feminine keeping crime involve petty, unsophisticated offenses, e. g. , shoplifting, misuse of credit cards, passing insalubrious checks, and welfare fraudcrimes related to the increasing feminization of poverty.The legal age of women continue to be arrested for victimless crimes for being drug addicts, for being intoxicated, for being prostitutes. Only 14 percent of those arrested for violent offenses are women. This rate has remained stable over time. terzetto out of four women arrested for violent offenses have committed simple assault. Women crap approximately one-tenth of the arrests for robbery, and one-tenth of the arrests for murder and non-negligent manslaughter. Changes in womens criminal behavior, like changes in womens social roles, have been slow and predictable (Corrections Statistics).Currently over 95,000 women are incarcerated in U. S. prisons, another 70,000 in our jails. The womens prison population in the U. S. has quadrupled since 1980, largely a result of a war on drugs that has translated into a war on women and the poor generally. Afro-American women have been hardest hit by this increase. They are 14. 5 percent of the women in the U. S. population, simply they constitute 52. 2 percent of the women in prison (Corrections Statistics). poor young women of color, most of whom are mothers, are locked in old overcrowded prisons, share lengthy sentences for drug offenses and petty property crimes.Incarceration for women in the joined States has come to mean rarityuring endless hours of boredom and idleness as women are brassatically denied access to meaningful programs months and years without visits from their children whose guardians cannot afford break expenses indignities, disrespect, and infantilization from the correctional provide. Women in prison are subject to an official system that carries the norm-enforcing patriarchal pattern of social control to absurd lengths. As iniquity follows day, omnipresent surveillance elicits the behavior it is installed to control.Faced with implacable patriarchal authority, a fe male buncos seemingly irrational oppositional behavior becomes a means for re-establishing her nature, for resisting the extraterrestrialation experienced when she is denied traditional expression of both her individualized individuality and her collective responsibilities. Intensive surveillance of female inmates is an historical tr ace in institutions of correction it reflects the belief that women should con conformity to gender-based stereotypes stressing obedience, dependence, and deference.calcium has the highest population of female prisoners among U. S. expresss. Since mandatory-sentencing laws went into set in the mid 1980s, the California female prison population has skyrocketed. At the end of 1986, women in Californias prisons totaled 3,564. As of September cc0, the female population now numbers 11,091 an increase of 311% in fourteen years (CDC Data). The vast majority of women sentenced under Californias two-strikes and three-strikes laws are for nonviolent crimes, particularly drug offenses.A 1999 study of women in the California prison system found that 71% of incarcerated women had experienced on-going physical clapperclaw prior to the age of 18 and that 62% experienced ongoing physical abuse after 18 years of age. The invoice also found that 41% of women incarcerated in California had exper ienced inner abuse prior to the age of 18 and 41% experienced knowledgeable abuse after 18 years of age. Such a smudge setting further inhibits the ability of female inmates to report or seek hangout in cases of abuse inside the prison system. (Bloom, Owen)Prisons for women in California are on average 171% over their designed capacity, with two prisons almost 200% over capacity. The Federal womens prison in Dublin is more than 128% over capacity (CDC Report). Valley State Penitentiary for Women (VSPW) and the adjacent profound California Womens Facility (CCWF) to farmher house almost 7,000 incarcerated women and is in all probability the largest womens prison complex in the world. (AI Report) Women in California call down prisons return only pennies an hour. Females incarcerated in federal prisons make a borderline of $5. 75 per month.Though inmates from the United States can sometimes make more money through Federal work programs, non-nationals are not permitted to make more than the base monthly amount. In California state prisons, women consume as little as $. 05 per hour. In the California prison system, trial run is a privilege not a right. Prisoners on death row and prisons in California serving life sentences without parole cannot receive unsupervised family visits. Family visits are also not permitted with common law relationships. Pregnant women in prison face unique problems.Stress, environmental and legal restrictions, unhealthy behavior, and wounded or nonexistent social support systemsall common among female inmateshave an even greater effect on expectant inmates. Women in prison are placed outside the normal mothering experience in such ways (Huft et al) Stress incarcerated women experience higher than normal levels of stress. They have a higher incidence of complications during maternalism, labor, and delivery. Restricted environment adaptation to pregnancy is limited by the prison environment.Mandatory work, structured meal times, and lose of environ-mental stimulation may decrease the likelihood of individualized prenatal deal out. For instance, pregnant inmates receive standard clothing that often does not fit well. Alternatives for supererogatory clothing (e. g. , stockings and shoes) may be dictated by availability within the institution or by what family and friends are pull up stakesing to supply. In addition, corrective action or other restrictions may interfere with the offenders adaptation to pregnancy. Altered social support systems even if ideal opportunities for nutritionary education and physical development are available during pregnancy, pregnant women will not take advantage of them if they do not receive support from their inmate peer groups. Limited health care facilities or staff sometimes warrants the immediate transfer of a pregnant inmate to a civilian hospital at the onset of labor. Altered maternal roles maternalistic identity element depends on rehearsal for the anticip ated role after birth. Women in Federal prisons do not directly care for their infants after birth. maturation a maternal role therefore depends upon plans for placing the infant after birth. The inmate can place the infant either for adoption or for guardianship. breeding for care includes teaching the mother decision-making skills. Counseling should emphasize developing an identity during pregnancy and strategies for coping with the loss of the infant. After the birth, the mother will postulate counseling in making or accepting the decision to place the infant for adoption or temporary guardianship. One of the major concerns of women in prison is their children.A large percentage of women in our criminal umpire system are mothers. According to Amnesty International, 78% of women in state prisons are mothers (Impact on Children, 1999). Because there are fewer women in prison than men, there are fewer womens facilities throughout the country. As a result, women are placed in pris ons located miles away from their children and families (Chesney-Lind, 1998). Consequently, children spend less time visiting their mothers in these facilities. For children who resided in the same alkali as their mother prior to her incarceration, this is an extremely traumatic experience.Children whose parents are incarcerated are often placed in the care of other family members, in foster care or in juvenile homes. Nationwide, 50% of the children in the juvenile nicety system have a parent in prison (Impact on Children, 1999). Very few children will go live with their father and the majority of children, approximately 60%, are taken in and cared for by their grandmothers. However, some(prenominal) of these grandmothers are financially unstable and do not have the means to support and satisfy all the needs of these children.As if this is not traumatic enough, children of incarcerated mothers face many other hardships. Along with being removed from the home they grew up in and t heir families, children face other unfamiliar challenges such as attending new schools and living in new homes in alien settings. These children may demonstrate a variety of emotional and psychological responses such as hyperactivity, attention deficits, delinquency, and teenage pregnancy, withdrawal from social relationships or hit the hay in to denial along with difficulty with intimacy and assertiveness, lack of cuss in others, and poor academic performance.(Impact on Children, 1999). The vast majority of female prisoners in the United States are held in women-only facilities. About one-fifth of all female inmates are housed in co-ed facilities that is, prisons that accommodate both male and female offenders. Interaction between male and female inmates at coed prisons is stripped and men and women share only certain vocational, technical, or educational resources and unp abet facilities. Female inmates are housed in units that are entirely separate from units for male inmate s during evening hours (Encarta).The coed facilities present less problems than one would expect, a phenomenon attributed to the softening effect women have on male inmates. The living conditions at a womens prison are somewhat more pleasant, but there is often a shortage of programs. Womens prisons are usually less security-conscious. uncomplete the inmate code nor the hidden economy is well developed. Rather than form gangs, women tend to create pseudofamilies, in which they adopt various family roles father, mother, daughter, sister in a type of half serious, half play-acting set of relationships.Some of these roles, but not all of them, involve homosexual relationships. In conclusion, I judge that these issues of women in the criminal system should be brought to more awareness to let the public know of these problems and maybe it will help women and young women to get off that track of crime so they dont end up like all of these other women in these prisons.Bibliography Corr ections Statistics. U. S. segment of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Statistics Website, 2004 Chesney-Lind, M. Women in Prison From partial Justice to Vengeful Equity. Corrections Today, vol. 60, no. 7, 1998. Impact on Children of Women in Prison. Amnesty International Website, 2004 Californian Prisons Failure to protect prisoners from abuse Amnesty International Issue AMR 51/79/00. 24 May, 2000 California Department of Corrections Data. California Statistical Abstract, 12/1999.McClellan, Dorothy S. Coming to the aid of women in U. S. prisons, Monthly Review, June, 2002. Huft, Anita G. , Fawkes, Lena. and Lawson, Travis. Care of the Pregnant Offender Federal Prisons Journal, discharge 1992. Prison, Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2004 Owen, Barbara, and Barbara Bloom. Profiling the needs of the California youth authoritys female population. ICPSR version. Fresno, CA California State University, 1997.