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Special Topic: Justice-Involved Women

Justice Involved Women Items

2018 and newer

Women’s Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2019

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? How is their experience different from men’s? 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.

The Gendered Burdens of Conviction and Collateral Consequences on Employment

Ex-offenders are subject to a wide range of employment restrictions that limit the ability of individuals with a criminal background to earn a living. This article argues that women involved in the criminal justice system likely suffer a greater income-related burden from criminal conviction than do men. This disproportionate burden arises in occupations that women typically pursue, both through formal pathways, such as restrictions on occupational licensing, and through informal pathways, such as employers’ unwillingness to hire those with a criminal record.

Federal Bureau of Prisons - Female Offenders

Women account for approximately 7 percent of the federal inmate population. Nationwide, women are a growing correctional population, however in the Bureau of Prisons, women have maintained a steady proportion of the overall population. The Bureau houses women in 29 facilities across the country.

Review of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Management of Its Female Inmate Population

As of September 2016, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) incarcerated 10,567 sentenced female inmates, representing 7 percent of the total BOP sentenced inmate population of 146,084. Though female inmates compose a small percentage of the nationwide incarcerated population, correctional officials have recognized that in some areas female and male inmates have different needs and BOP has adopted gender-responsive programs and policies that account for these needs. As a continuation of prior U.S.

Policing Women: Race and gender disparities in police stops, searches, and use of force

Jails have been described as the criminal justice system’s “front door,” but jail incarceration typically begins with the police, with an arrest. Before any bail hearing, pretrial detention, prosecution, or sentencing, there is contact with the police. But despite their crucial role in the process, we know less about these police encounters than other stages of the criminal justice system.

Women make up a growing share of arrests and report much more use of force than they did 20 years ago.

Incarcerated Women and Girls

Over the past quarter century, there has been a profound change in the involvement of women within the criminal justice system. This is the result of more expansive law enforcement efforts, stiffer drug sentencing laws, and post-conviction barriers to reentry that uniquely affect women. The female incarcerated population stands nearly eight times higher than in 1980. More than 60% of women in state prisons have a child under the age of 18.1) Between 1980 and 2017, the number of incarcerated women increased by more than 750%, rising from a total of 26,378 in 1980 to 225,060 in 2017.

Quick Facts on Women in the Federal Offender Population

This information sheet offers a number of quick facts about Women in the Federal Offender Population in the United States.

Who’s helping the 1.9 million women released from prisons and jails each year?

Given the dramatic growth of women’s incarceration in recent years, it’s concerning how little attention and how few resources have been directed to meeting the reentry needs of justice-involved women. After all, we know that women have different pathways to incarceration than men, and distinct needs, including the treatment of past trauma and substance use disorders, and more broadly, escaping poverty and meeting the needs of their children and families.

The Gender Divide: Tracking Women's State Prison Growth

The story of women’s prison growth has been obscured by overly broad discussions of the “total” prison population for too long. This report sheds more light on women in the era of mass incarceration by tracking prison population trends since 1978 for all 50 states. The analysis identifies places where recent reforms appear to have had a disparate effect on women, and offers states recommendations to reverse mass incarceration for women alongside men.

Federal Bureau of Prisons - Inmate Gender

This page shows the Federal Bureau of Prisons statistics on the gender of inmates in the federal prison system.

Pregnancy Outcomes in US Prisons, 2016–2017

At the end of 2016, there were 111,616 women in prisons across the United States, a 742% increase from the 13,258 women in prisons in 1980. The United States has 4% of the world’s female population but 30% of its female incarcerated population. Although there has also been an exponential rise among men— as part of the complex political, social, racial, and public health phenomenon known as mass incarceration—the rate of increase of women in custody has outpaced that of men.

2018 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: Women

National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) 2017 Highlights

Designing ‘Healthy’ Prisons for Women: Incorporating Trauma-Informed Care and Practice (TICP) into Prison Planning and Design

There has been growing acknowledgment among scholars, prison staff, and policy-makers that gender-informed thinking should feed into penal policy but must be implemented holistically if gains are to be made in reducing trauma, saving lives, ensuring emotional wellbeing, and promoting desistance from crime. This means that not only healthcare services and psychology programs must be sensitive to individuals’ trauma histories but that the architecture and design of prisons should also be sympathetic, facilitating, and encouraging trauma-informed and trauma-sensitive practices within.

Still Worse Than Second-Class: Solitary Confinement of Women in the United States

This report was first published in 2014. Since then, some things have changed for women in solitary confinement—but many things have not. More attention has been placed on women in prison and on solitary confinement in general, but still, little attention has been paid to the specific plight of women in solitary confinement. Although laws, court decisions, and settlement agreements have all limited the use of solitary confinement for certain populations in some jurisdictions, the use of solitary confinement is still rampant in the United States.

D.C. Women in Prison: Continuing Problems and Recommendations for Change

Over 20 years ago, in litigation challenging conditions for women in District of Columbia prisons, a federal district court found widespread violations of the women’s rights, citing unsanitary and otherwise substandard living conditions, inadequate medical care, and educational, recreational, and religious opportunities that were inferior compared with those available to men housed in the same facilities.

A new way to treat women's mental health in prison

Flanked by fig groves and vineyards and surrounded by electrified fences and thick coils of barbed wire, the Central California Women’s Facility is the largest women only prison in the state. Inside the low-slung cinderblock buildings, in a trailer that doubles as a classroom, a dozen prisoners have gathered around a conference table. They are black, white and Latina; former gang members, preschool teachers, musicians and veterans. They have one thing in common. All these women are serving long-term sentences for committing violent offenses.

The Bangkok Rules: United Nations Rules for the Treatment of Women Prisoners and Non-custodial Measures for Women Offenders

The United Nations Rules for the Treatment of Women Prisoners and Non-custodial Measures for Women Offenders (‘the Bangkok Rules’) were adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 2010 and fill a long-standing lack of standards providing for the specific characteristics and needs of women offenders and prisoners.

Historically, prisons and prison regimes have almost invariably been designed for the majority male prison population – from the architecture of prisons, to security procedures, to healthcare, family contact, work and training.

National Directory of Programs for Women with Criminal Justice Involvement

The programs on this site are varied in the populations they serve and services provided. This database is intended for correctional stakeholders working across front end decision-making, pre-trial release, jail and prison reentry and covers topical areas such as parenting programs and substance abuse and/or behavioral health. We have found this site to be a resource in correctional case planning, management, and supervision and treatment of women in correctional systems but also as a source of information for those interested in developing programs to serve women.

An Unsupported Population: The Treatment of Women in Texas’ Criminal Justice System

In March 2018, The Texas Criminal Justice Coalition released a report, A Growing Population: The Surge of Women into Texas’ Criminal Justice System, which examines the growing number of women entering Texas’ criminal justice system and offers recommendations for safely reducing this population and helping women thrive in the community.

National Resource Center on Justice Involved Women

The National Resource Center on Justice Involved Women (NRCJIW) was established to address the complex needs of women involved in the criminal justice system.

The mission of the NRCJIW is to provide guidance and support to criminal justice professionals—and to promote evidence-based, gender-responsive, and trauma-informed policies and practices—in order to reduce the number and improve the outcomes of women involved in the criminal justice system.

Working With Incarcerated And Reentering Women: Curricula And Resources For Individual And Group Work

Many researchers and practitioners working with justice-involved women understand the gendered nature of how women end up incarcerated. They also recognize that many (if not most) of the women in these institutions have experienced trauma – either as a child and/or as an adult. Practitioners working with women in jails and prisons also understand that all imprisoned women experience the trauma of incarceration. As a result, advocates, service providers, and others, have created programming for women that is both gender-responsive and trauma-informed.

After Incarceration: A Guide To Helping Women Reenter the Community

As of 2016, over 1.2 million women in the United States were incarcerated in prison or jail, on probation, or on parole. Since 2000, the rate of women’s incarceration in jails rose over 26 percent, whereas the jail incarceration rate for men decreased by 5 percent.

Women in Prison: Seeking Justice Behind Bars

This report examines the civil rights of women in United States prisons. The population of women in prison has increased dramatically since the 1980s, and this growth has outpaced that of men in prison, yet there have been few national-level studies of the civil rights issues incarcerated women experience.

Correctional Programming and Gender

As the number of women under correctional supervision continues to increase in the United States, attention to gender within correctional programming is crucial as women offenders present with different concerns than their male counterparts. Gender differences exist in a range of criminal justice factors, including pathways to involvement in the criminal justice system, frequencies in types of offenses, treatment needs, and facilitating factors for treatment engagement and positive outcomes.

Check out previous Environmental Scans

The National Institute of Corrections publishes this compilation of resources each year as an overview of what research indicates to be the trends in the corrections industry each year.
Accession Number: (2018) 033176, (2019) 033431, (2020) 033563, (2021) 033670, (2022) 033086, (2023) 033087