Women's Prison Population Growing

by Donna Hazley, NOW Foundation - Women’s Health Project Coordinator

The population of women in prison in the United States is growing at a remarkable rate, and the rate of increase of women has grown faster than that of men each year since 1981.

At the end of 1988, more than 32,000 women were in state and federal prisons; the number has jumped 244 percent in the past eight years. The number of male prisoners has increased only 188 percent during the same period.

According to Amnesty International, one out of three women in prison or jail is being held for drug offenses rather than for violent crimes. Many are charged as accessories to crimes committed by men. The minor crimes that carry long prison sentences (mandatory minimums) involve drug conspiracy.

Take the case of Kemba Smith, who was sentenced to 24 years for being what the federal prosecutor described as a "minor player" in a drug conspiracy case. The judge who sentenced Kemba did not believe that the Battered Women Syndrome existed. The judge decided that the 20-year-old college student should have been able to think rationally despite the beatings and mental abuse by her violent batterer/boyfriend. After she spent six years in prison, the overwhelming support of people from around the world led to a presidential pardon and the release of Kemba Smith in January 2001. The struggle is not over, however. Countless numbers of Kembas remain in the prison system.

Imprisoned Women Face Poor Conditions, Abuse

Women are confined in a system designed, built and run by men for men, according to a 1990 issue of Time magazine. Women’s prisons are frequently ill-equipped and poorly financed. Medical treatment is often unavailable, and inconsistent. Women suffer filthy conditions, overcrowding and harsh treatment.

According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), women incarcerated in the 170 state prison facilities across the United States are, more often than not, guarded by men. Under the United Nations’ Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, guards are precluded from holding contact positions in which they are in constant physical proximity to prisoners of the opposite sex. However, since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, U.S. employers have been prohibited from denying a person a job solely on the basis of sex unless the person’s sex is reasonably necessary to the performance of the specific job. Male officers working in women’s prisons outnumber their female counterparts by at least two to one and in some facilities, three to one.

In interviews with HRW, women charged that male correctional employees rape female prisoners and sexually assault and abuse them. Male officers not only threaten and use physical force, but also use their authority to withhold goods and privileges from female prisoners to compel them to have sex. In some instances, women are impregnated as a result of prison employees’ sexual misconduct. These women sometimes face additional abuses in the forms of inappropriate segregation, denial of adequate health care, and pressure to seek an abortion.

Some women enter correctional facilities pregnant and give birth while incarcerated, and only a handful of states allows them to keep their children with them for even limited periods of time. In most situations, the infant is removed soon after birth.

When women are imprisoned, they and their families suffer tremendously. Forced separation from their children is for some women the most painful punishment they endure. Amnesty International reports that some children go to live with relatives in the hope that they might stay in touch with their mothers. Others are sent to foster care where parental rights may be terminated.

Women’s Violent Crimes Fundamentally Different From Men’s

Although women are less likely to be involved in homicide than men, they tend to receive longer sentences for that crime, even if committed in self-defense. Women are more likely to harm their male partners than to kill anyone else. Men are more likely to perpetrate homicides against individuals outside their own relationships. Still, men’s rate of murder against female partners is nearly double the rate of women murdering male partners. According to several authors on the issue of violence against women, homicide by women is often a response to preceding years of abuse from men.

Annually, more than two million women are battered by male partners. Battered women who attempt to leave abusive relationships are often attacked and threatened with murder or more violence. Battered women who resort to homicide have often tried repeatedly to obtain protection from their abusers. The same legal system that fails or refuses to protect battered women, prosecutes them vigorously when they fight back.

Angela Brown, a social psychologist who has conducted research in this area, concludes, "Women often face harsher penalties than men who kill their partners." According to Shelly Bannister, over one-third of all female children have been or will be abused by men inside and outside the family. She argues in a current criminal justice journal that "women who kill or attempt to kill their abusers are incarcerated for several reasons... to deter other women from believing that they can similarly resist... to reinforce in women the belief that they have no right to defend against or resist male attacks... to protect and assert power over women."

NOW Chapters, Activists Make a Difference

For several years, the Lansing Area (MI) NOW chapter had a Women in Prison Task Force, spearheaded by an advocate who originally came to the chapter on behalf of one woman she believed was unjustly imprisoned, but soon took on the rights of all women in prison. Conditions for the women improved slightly simply by the fact that someone was watching and advocating for them. But the Task Force did more, organizing pickets across from the prison that involved activists from other chapters. The Lansing Area chapter also started a defense fund and a petition drive that raised community awareness.

Eventually, the Chair of the Task Force found a powerful attorney who took the case of the woman who had first come to her attention, and the woman, who was wrongly imprisoned for life without parole, was eventually freed.

In the 1970s Westchester (NY) NOW connected with the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility and helped form a chapter still existing there.

"It wasn’t easy trying to get prison officials to cooperate. But we had an insider, an advisor to the women, who would coordinate meetings, pass out literature and help promote wellness within the facility," says Gerri Miller of Bronx NOW.

NOW Vice President Karen Johnson met with the women in Bedford Hills a few years ago at a Special Event Day that involved activists from several chapters getting together at the facility.

"Unless you have the opportunity to visit them in prison, unless you have a relative there, it’s easy to forget women in prison. And few programs help them make the transition when they leave," says Miller. "There is so much we could do."

Some facts on domestic violence provided by the California Coalition for Battered Women:

Six million women are beaten by their husbands or boyfriends each year in the United States; 1500 of them die.

In the United States, a woman is more likely to be assaulted, injured, raped, or killed by a male partner than any other assailant.

According to the Surgeon General Report, battering is the number one cause of injury to women in the U.S. Attacks by husbands on wives result in more injuries requiring medical treatment than rapes, muggings and auto accidents combined.

Violence will occur in at least two-thirds of all marriages.

Thirty percent of female homicide victims are killed by their husbands or boyfriends.

Eight million children are affected by domestic violence each year.

Domestic violence occurs among all races and socioeconomic groups.

Almost 90% of the hostage-taking in the U.S. is domestic violence. Most hostages are the wives or female partners of hostage-takers although children too are frequently taken hostage.

The injuries that battered women receive are at least as serious as injuries suffered in 90% of violent felony crimes; yet under the state law, they are most often classified as misdemeanors.