Justice Involved Women 2019
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.
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
The Gendered Burdens of Conviction and Collateral Consequences on Employment
Quick Facts on Women in the Federal Offender Population
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.
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
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
Designing ‘Healthy’ Prisons for Women: Incorporating Trauma-Informed Care and Practice (TICP) into Prison Planning and Design
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.
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
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
After Incarceration: A Guide To Helping Women Reenter the Community
D.C. Women in Prison: Continuing Problems and Recommendations for Change
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.
Working With Women Who Perpetrate Violence: A Practice Guide
Testing a New Intervention With Incarcerated Women Serving Life Sentences
Purpose: Incarcerated women serving life sentences are a growing subpopulation with multiple mental health needs. However, no existing interventions have been designed for or tested with this population. Method: This study tested a gender-responsive, trauma-informed intervention (Beyond Violence) and examined changes in incarcerated women’s mental health and anger expression. Pre-, post-, and follow-up surveys were administered to two treatment groups with women with life sentences.