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POLICING THE USA
Policing the USA

As female jail population increases, call for reform: Column

Women stuck in a system meant for men that doesn't meet needs

Laurie Garduque and Nicholas Turner
An inmate is returned to solitary.

She is there for shoplifting. She’s poor — likely too poor to afford bail, even if set at less than $500. She's probably a single mom.

She is one of the nearly 110,000 women in America's jails. It's a group that has largely been overlooked and ignored at a time when the nation is grappling with mass incarceration.

Women in jail (local lockups, where people await trial or serve short sentences) are America’s fastest growing population behind bars. The number of women in jail has skyrocketed from 8,000 in 1970 and continued to grow even during the years when the number of men declined. In 1970, nearly three-quarters of U.S. counties had no women in their jail systems. In 2014, nearly every county did.

Policing the USA

Unlike prisons, which are gender specific and house people serving long sentences, only a small fraction of U.S. jails house only women. Jails are built and run with men in mind, and women are the forgotten inmates, living on isolated floors or housing units, out of sight and out of mind.

While women are only about 15% of the number of people in jail, their incarceration has an outsized impact on families and communities. Nearly eight in 10 women in jail are mothers. The majority are single parents.

Many of the women in jail don't need to be there. An overwhelming majority were arrested on low-level offenses, including property, drug or public disorder offenses. Many of them are serving time because they cannot make bail, not because they are a threat to public safety. We know that women are more likely than men to enter jail with mental and physical health needs — nearly one in three women in jail had suffered from a serious mental illness in the past year, according to a 2012 report released by the Bureau of Justice Assistance.

They are also significantly more economically disadvantaged than men. The median net wealth of most women in this country is still significantly lower than the net wealth of their male counterparts. It's only $100 and $120 for single black and single Hispanic women respectively and $41,500 for single white women, according to a study released in 2010 by the Insight Center for Community Economic Development. Women in jail are also more likely to have lacked full-time employment before their arrest and are more likely to be on public assistance. As a result, they’re more affected by burdens imposed by the criminal justice system, such as fines, fees and bail. Inability to pay can begin a devastating cycle of incarceration.

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Women enter jail with distinct gender-specific challenges, including shocking rates of sexual abuse and trauma — 86% of women in jail report having experienced sexual violence in their lifetime; 77% report having experienced partner violence.

The jail experience often exacerbates the problems that led to incarceration in the first place. From mounting debt they cannot afford, to experiences behind bars like shackling that can reignite past trauma, jail is uniquely devastating to the women who enter it — and their families.

All this is what we know about the women cycling through our jails. But there is even more we don’t know. Relevant research is scarce and outdated. And without fully understanding who these women are and their path to jail, it’s hard to know what works to put them and their families on a more supportive path.

Fortunately, the time is ripe for bringing women into the center of our national conversation on jails. Many local jurisdictions are exploring new ways to reduce their reliance on jails — and many of the solutions they develop to divert people who are brought in on low-level offenses or have mental health needs have the potential to especially benefit women.

We need to consider how women are impacted at every stage of the criminal justice system and then develop gender-responsive policies to effectively address their distinct needs. We can’t assume that what has worked for men will also work for women. Recent successes in juvenile justice reform — which have produced declines in girls’ incarceration rates, but at a much smaller scale than those of boys — provide a cautionary tale for implementing reforms without gender in mind.

Why is the juvenile justice system failing girls?

The way jails are used in America is inequitable, ineffective and often harmful to citizens, communities and families. But what we are seeing now is that over-incarceration and the misuse of jails has particularly dire consequences for women. As we begin to reckon with how to reverse course on mass incarceration, we should pay attention to the women behind bars whose trajectories and needs have been cast aside for too long.

Laurie Garduque leads the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's Safety and Justice Challenge. Nicholas Turner is the president of the Vera Institute of Justice. Vera and the SJC recently released a report on the growing population of women in U.S. jails.

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