'Issues facing women in prisons Essay\r'

'The issues of wo manpower in prison house home house ar clouded with amazing stereotypes and silence. Women atomic number 18 the hot growing sector of the prison cosmos in the get together States. Even much than men, most women be incarcerated for non- reddish byenses. These women atomic number 18 a good deal products of sexist and racist attitudes, and do not get hold of marketable job skills. frugal survival for herself and her family often means prostitution, forging, petty thievery or some kind of hustle. Once incarcerated, women go less approaching to education, job training programs, and early(a) services than men.\r\nWhen released, women be more often damaged for having done time, and less alikely to reach kayoed for prolong. In the 1970s, two women sociologists, Rita Simon and Freda Adler, argued that the extent and nature of women’s criminality appe atomic number 18d to be changing. They predicted that women’s criminal behavior would continue to undergo dramatic changes until it closely resembled men’s. The increase in the frequency and seriousness of womanish criminality, they believed, would come in crimes tradition on the wholey associated with men.\r\nWomen’s unused emancipation and assertiveness, women’s expanded economic opportunities, women’s new affectionate roles, would lead to their more shop at and serious criminality (McClellan). Many of the coarsest increases for serious offenses are found in traditionally pistillate crimes much(prenominal) as fraud, forgery, larceny/theft, and dose violations. Most of the increases in female property crime involve petty, frank offenses, e. g. , shoplifting, misuse of credit cards, passing bad checks, and welfare fraudâ€crimes related to the increasing feminization of poverty.\r\nThe wakeless age of women continue to be arrested for victimless crimes: for organism drug addicts, for existence intoxicated, for being prosti tutes. Only 14 percent of those arrested for violent offenses are women. This rate has remained stable over time. triple out of four women arrested for violent offenses cede attached simple assault. Women constitute around ten percent of the arrests for robbery, and one-tenth of the arrests for murder and non-negligent manslaughter. Changes in women’s criminal behavior, like changes in women’s social roles, have been slacken and predictable (Corrections Statistics).\r\nCurrently over 95,000 women are incarcerated in U. S. prisons, an opposite 70,000 in our jails. The women’s prison race 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. Afri bear-American women have been hardest hit by this increase. They are 14. 5 percent of the women in the U. S. race, save they constitute 52. 2 percent of the women in prison (Corrections Statistics). Poor young women of color, most of whom are haves, are locked in old overcrowded prisons, serving lengthy sentences for drug offenses and petty property crimes.\r\nIncarceration for women in the United States has come to mean enduring endless hours of tiresomeness and idleness as women are musical arrangementatically denied access to meaningful programs; months and years without visits from their children whose guardians cannot afford travel expenses; indignities, disrespect, and childilization from the punitive staff. Women in prison are subject to an appointed system that carries the norm-enforcing patriarchal pattern of social arrest to absurd lengths. As night follows day, omnipresent precaution elicits the behavior it is installed to control.\r\nFaced with implacable patriarchal authority, a female inmate’s seemingly nonrational oppositional behavior becomes a means for re-establishing her nature, for resisting the alienation see when she is denied traditional expression of both her personal individuality and her collective responsibilities. Intensive surveillance of female inmates is an diachronic vestige in institutions of correction; it reflects the belief that women should aline to gender-based stereotypes stressing obedience, dependence, and deference.\r\n atomic number 20 has the highest population of female prisoners among U. S. states. Since mandatory-sentencing laws went into effect in the mid 1980’s, the atomic number 20 female prison population has skyrocketed. At the end of 1986, women in atomic number 20’s prisons totaled 3,564. As of September 2000, the female population now numbers 11,091 †an increase of 311% in cardinal years (CDC Data). The vast majority of women sentenced under California’s two-strikes and three-strikes laws are for nonviolent crimes, particularly drug offenses.\r\nA 1999 study of women in the California prison system found that 71% of incarcerated women had undergo ongoing physical ill-use prior to t he age of 18 and that 62% experienced ongoing physical contumely afterwards 18 years of age. The report similarly found that 41% of women incarcerated in California had experienced sexual abuse prior to the age of 18 and 41% experienced sexual abuse after 18 years of age. Such a screen background further inhibits the ability of female inmates to report or seek recourse in cases of abuse in spite of appearance the prison system. (Bloom, Owen)\r\nPrisons for women in California are on average 171% over their designed qualification, with two prisons close 200% over capacity. The federal official women’s prison in Dublin is more than 128% over capacity (CDC Report). Valley State Penitentiary for Women (VSPW) and the adjacent important California Women’s Facility (CCWF) together house almost 7,000 incarcerated women and is probably the largest women’s prison labyrinthine in the world. (AI Report) Women in California state prisons bump off only pennies an ho ur. Females incarcerated in federal prisons authorise a minimum of $5. 75 per month.\r\nThough inmates from the United States can sometimes make more money by means of Federal work programs, non-nationals are not permitted to make more than the base monthly amount. In California state prisons, women earn as little as $. 05 per hour. In the California prison system, visitation is a privilege not a right. Prisoners on closing row and prisons in California serving action sentences without parole cannot receive unsupervised family visits. Family visits are too not permitted with common law relationships. Pregnant women in prison typesetters case unique problems.\r\nStress, environmental and legal restrictions, unhealthy behavior, and weakened or nonexistent social support systemsâ€all common among female inmatesâ€have an even greater effect on with child(predicate) inmates. Women in prison are injectd international the normal m oppositeing 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 pregnancy, labor, and delivery. • Restricted environment †edition to pregnancy is limited by the prison environment.\r\nMandatory work, structured meal times, and lack of environ-mental stimulant whitethorn decrease the likelihood of individualized antenatal business organisation. For instance, pregnant inmates receive standard clothing that often does not fit well. Alternatives for special clothing (e. g. , stockings and shoes) may be dictated by availability indoors the institution or by what family and friends are instinctive to supply. In addition, disciplinary action or other restrictions may interfere with the offender’s adaptation to pregnancy.\r\n• Altered social support systems †even if holy man opportunities for nutritional education and physical development are available during pregnancy, pregnant women go away not lease advantage of them if they do not receive support from their inmate peer groups. Limited health care facilities or staff sometimes warrants the immediate depute of a pregnant inmate to a noncombatant hospital at the onset of labor. • Altered maternal rolesâ€Maternal identity depends on rehearsal for the pass judgment role after birth. Women in Federal prisons do not directly care for their childs after birth.\r\nontogenesis 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. Preparation for care includes teaching the mother decision-making skills. Counseling should emphasize create an identity during pregnancy and strategies for coping with the loss of the infant. after(prenominal) the birth, the mother will need counseling in making or accepting the decision to place the infant for adoption or temporary guardianship. iodine of the major concerns of women in prison is their children.\r\nA large percentage of women in our criminal jurist system are mothers. According to Amnesty international, 78% of women in state prisons are mothers ( encroachment on Children, 1999). Because there are fewer women in prison than men, there are fewer women’s facilities throughout the country. As a result, women are placed in prisons 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 home as their mother prior to her incarceration, this is an extremely traumatic experience.\r\nChildren whose parents are incarcerated are often placed in the care of other family members, in foster care or in juvenile homes. â€Å"Nationwide, 50% of the children in the juvenile justice 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, many of these grandmothers are financially unstable and do not have the means to support and meet all the take of these children.\r\nAs 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 their families, children face other unfamiliar challenges such as go to new schools and musical accompaniment in new homes in alien settings. These children may demonstrate a strain of emotional and psychological responses such as â€Å"hyperactivity, solicitude deficits, delinquency, and teenage pregnancy, withdrawal from social relationships or hit the hay in to denial” along with difficulty with engagement and assertiveness, lack of trust in others, and poor schoolman performance.\r\n(Impact on Children, 1999). The vast majority of female prisoners in the United States are he ld in women-only facilities. About one-fifth of all female inmates are housed in coeducational facilities †that is, prisons that accommodate both male and female offenders. fundamental interaction between male and female inmates at coed prisons is minimum and men and women share only certain vocational, technical, or educational resources and recreational facilities. Female inmates are housed in units that are entirely separate from units for male inmates during change surface hours (Encarta).\r\nThe coed facilities present less problems than one would expect, a phenomenon attributed to the â€Å" soften” effect women have on male inmates. The living conditions at a women’s prison are somewhat more pleasant, but there is often a shortage of programs. Women’s prisons are commonly less security-conscious. Neither the inmate code nor the hush-hush economy is well developed. Rather than form gangs, women turn tail to create pseudofamilies, in which they adopt various family roles †father, mother, daughter, child †in a type of half(prenominal) serious, half play-acting set of relationships.\r\nSome of these roles, but not all of them, involve homosexual relationships. In conclusion, I compute 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 don’t end up like all of these other women in these prisons.\r\nBibliography: Corrections Statistics. U. S. Department of legal expert. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Statistics Website, 2004 <www.ojp. usdoj. gov/bjs/> Chesney-Lind, M. Women in Prison: From fond(p) Justice to Vengeful Equity. Corrections Today, vol. 60, no. 7, 1998. â€Å"Impact on Children of Women in Prison”. Amnesty International Website, 2004 <http: www. amnestyusa. org/rightsforall/women/ factsheets/children. htm l> â€Å"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.\r\nMcClellan, Dorothy S. â€Å"Coming to the aid of women in U. S. prisons,” Monthly Review, June, 2002. Huft, Anita G. , Fawkes, Lena. and Lawson, Travis. â€Å"Care of the Pregnant Offender” Federal Prisons Journal, Spring 1992. â€Å"Prison,” Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2004 <http://encarta. msn. com/encyclopedia_761573083/Prison. html> Owen, Barbara, and Barbara Bloom. Profiling the needs of the California youth authority’s female population. ICPSR version. Fresno, CA: California State University, 1997.\r\n'