Study: The Growing, Disproportionate Number Of Women Of Color In U.S. Jails : NPR

In Canada, 15 percent of those admitted to provincial/territorial prisons are women. For Indigenous peoples, the number is 20 percent for federal admissions, 24 percent for provincial/territorial admissions (Indigenous females accounted for a higher proportion of female admissions to provincial/territorial sentenced custody (36%) than did Aboriginal males (25%):

To be sure, the jail population is mostly male. Women represent 15 percent of the jail population in smaller counties, and slightly less in larger counties. But according to the study, the overall population of women in jails has ballooned since the 1970s, from just under 8,000 to nearly 110,000 nationwide in 2014, with low-income women of color disproportionately represented — 64 percent of women in jails across the country are women of color.

And while local jail populations are among the fastest growing correctional populations for both men and women, the U.S. Department of Justice reports that from 2000 to 2010, the female jail population grew at a faster rate than the male population.

….Swavola said existing research does not clearly explain the fast growth of the women’s population in small-county jails, but she pointed out that smaller counties can have fewer resources for social services, mental health resources and employment opportunities. “In those communities, they rely on incarceration to deal with people with mental and behavioral challenges,” says Swavola.

Laurie Garduque, director of Justice Reform for the MacArthur Foundation, which funded the study, says in many places around the country, jails have essentially become warehouses for the poor. Like men, most women in jail ended up there for nonviolent offenses. The study found that in Davidson County, Tennessee, for example, 77 percent of women were booked into jail on misdemeanor charges. The most common charge was failure to appear after receiving a citation.

“Much of the problems that bring women into the criminal justice system…tend to be low-level offenses or nuisance behavior that do not pose a risk to public safety,” says Garduque.

In their analysis, the researchers also found that 32 percent of women in U.S. jails suffer from serious mental illness, including major depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Garduque says the trauma of being in jail can make it harder to cope with existing mental health problems. She says police officers, corrections officers and other employees in the criminal justice system need better training on how to interact with people with mental illnesses, and that this new research shows that mental health programs need to be more accessible outside of jail.

“Our aim here is not to improve mental health programs in jails,” says Garduque. “Our aim is to provide those resources on the community-based level to prevent women from penetrating the system.”

What’s more, many women enter the jail system having already experienced significant trauma. “There is a history of physical and domestic abuse for a lot of our moms,” says Samuel Luddington, deputy director of programs at Children of Inmates in Miami, which helps incarcerated parents stay connected with their children. Luddington says the current system wasn’t set up to provide that sort of care.

As for life after jail, re-entry programs that are developed with gender in mind are among the most effective, says Swavola, the co-author of study. For instance, Connecticut tried out a pilot probation program along those lines from 2007 to 2010. The project was based on the Women Offender Case Management Model developed by National Institute of Corrections. It was designed to take into account risk factors that girls and women tend to face at higher rates, such as domestic violence and mental illness. and partner abuse. It also encouraged women to have a voice in their own case management.

A review of women on probation who participated in the Connecticut program found those women were about 11 percent less likely to be arrested again after one year compared to women who did not participate in the program.

Source: Study: The Growing, Disproportionate Number Of Women Of Color In U.S. Jails : Code Switch : NPR