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Gender equality in criminal justice
Gender equality in criminal justice
Gender equality in criminal justice
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In this paper I will explain how life in prison differs for a female as for a male. I will explain how they differently deal with the situation of being incarcerated and how it affects them both. I will show how the number of incarcerated male and female inmates has gone up throughout the years. I will talk about the challenges and rewards officers face when working with male and female inmates. I will also incorporate the different type of organizations and programs the criminal justice system offers to help them. I will include examples throughout my research paper of both, female and male, to show how they are different. Male vs Female Life in Prison As we all know females and males have always been very different from each other and being incarcerated makes no difference. They both have different ways of adjusting to prison and dealing with their new life. Laura E. Bedard (the first female Deputy Secretary of the Florida Department of Corrections) said that one of her colleagues once summarized the difference between working with male and female inmates as follows: “When you tell a male inmate to tuck his …show more content…
male inmates: The rewards and challenges of managing both” the writer interviewed two people who have had the opportunity to work with both, male and female. One of them was Shawn Gillis; he has worked 14 years with the Georgia Department of Corrections and with the Corrections Corporation of America. Gillis was always skeptical of working with females but eventually became the new assistant warden of operations at a female facility for the past six months. Shawn Gillis confessed,” I must say that my latest venture has been most rewarding”. He explained that the majority of females are very open to rehabilitation programs, classes and other activities. He remarked that males are very reluctant to volunteer for programs not because they feel they don’t need it but because males operate on peer pressure, male ego and
Across the country the ratio of male inmates to women is huge. According to “Criminal Justice a brief introduction” by Frank Schmalleger It states that the ratio that for every 15 male inmates there is only one female. But that doesn’t mean that the number of female inmates aren’t rapidly increasing. Even though there are similarities within both men and women’s prisons they are still in ways different.
Erin G., 2010, A Woman Doing Life: Notes from a Prison for Women: The Southwest Journal of Criminal Justice. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Pp. vi, 202, Vol. 8(2)175.
Women in Prison. Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics Varnam, Steve. Our prisons are a crime (reforming the prison system). Editorial. Christianity Today 21 June 1993
A pivotal point in female corrections was the implementation of the Arbour Report (Griffiths & Murdoch, 2014). This report recommended that an all male emergency response team should not be the first response, also, male correctional staff cannot be present while a strip search in being conducted (Griffiths & Murdoch, 2014). This report shaped corrections and it makes the female offenders accounted for since their rights were infringed.
The book titled Beyond Bars: Rejoining Society After Prison offers invaluable lessons of how both men and women may successfully depart prison and return to society. The book was written by Jeffrey Ross and Stephen Richards, both of whom are college professors and criminal justice experts. The population of prisons across the United States has increased dramatically in recent decades despite overall crime rates decreasing during the same time period. Approximately seven million American people are in some form of correctional custody. Between the years1980 and 2000, America’s prison population increased by 500 percent. During the same time period, the number of prisons grew by 300 percent (Ross and Richards, xii). Close to 50 percent of people admitted to confinement have previously served time, exemplifying that the criminal justice system “recycles” inmates through the system again and again (Ross and Richards, xi). Unfortunately, many convicts simply do not remember how to or are ill-equipped to return to society once their sentence ends. Ross and Richards, through their valuable lessons within their book, seek to lessen the problems that ex-prisoners may face when released from prison.
Once released from prison, he or she is deemed a felon. Losing the right to vote, not being able to serve on a jury, and inability to enforce his or her second amendment is just a few of the disadvantages of serving time, but this is just the textbook interpretation. There is no much more that is at stake when you step foot behind bars. Once a person gains their freedom the better question to ask is what wasn’t taken form them? Their job if there was one in the first place, their children, their family, and most importantly the part of the person that made them a member of society.
Intersectionality is best described as the “interaction between gender, race, and other categories of difference in individual lives, social practices, institutional arrangements, and cultural ideologies and the outcomes of these interactions in terms of power” (Davis) It is a vehicle through which social psychology is able to view the differences between, gender, race class, and sexuality, and, furthermore, asses their compounded effect when an individual is disadvantaged by more than one of these forms of oppression. The conceptions of race, gender, and class have all played roles in shaping the United States Industrial Prison Complex and those who are subject to its injustices.The state of Louisiana, alone,
writers are ‘doubly marginal’, being female and a writer in prison whereas at the same time black women suffer threefold- as a woman, prisoner, and African American”(Willingham 57). Although both of these women are prisoners, one of them is viewed as prison writer and another women is viewed just as prisoner. Beside they being treated just by their race, even in an African American society, the perception of looking imprisoned men and women are different, African American women are subjected for gender difference. Willingham mentions the thought of a African American woman, “African American men are almost made martyrs and heroes when they come out of prison but when African American women go back to their communities, the are not only unfit people, they are also marked with the title of unfit mother, and it’s hard to trust us”
Statistically, the male population in jail/prisons are much higher than the female population. This is not necessarily because females are less inclined to criminal tendencies than males, but more because society views them more as victims and/or innocent. (Men Sentenced To Long…2012 p.2) From the time women are small until they grow up, they are told that they are fragile, kind, they should not curse, or fight, etc. There are countless sexist roles and behaviors that are pushed on women, and so society views women along side the typical view. In a statistical graph by the of Bureau of Justice Statistics states that the number of people incarcerated per 100,000 people of that sex is as follows: 126 women and 1,352 males. (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2010. p.1) That is an incredible difference in the number of incarcerated individuals per jail/prison. Societal view with women is becoming more level headed today, and sentencing disparity on the gender platform is coming to a more equal level; however, it is still a long way away from being equal. According to an article in the Huffington
The state of women in the United States criminal justice system, an apparently fair organization of integrity and justice, is a perfect example of a seemingly equal situation, which turns out to be anything but. While the policies imposed in the criminal justice system have an effect on all Americans, they affect men and women in extremely dissimilar manners. By looking at the United States' history of females in the criminal justice system, the social manipulation of these females and the everlasting affects that incarceration have on all women, both in and out of prison, this essay will explore the use of the criminal justice system as simply another form of control from which there is no hope of escape. This system of control then leads to the examination of the everlasting, yet never successful, female struggle to balance the private sphere of domesticity with the public sphere of society and the criminal justice system's attempt to keep women within the boundaries of the private.
According to statistics since the early 1970’s there has been a 500% increase in the number of people being incarcerated with an average total of 2.2 million people behind bars. The increase in rate of people being incarcerated has also brought about an increasingly disproportionate racial composition. The jails and prisons have a high rate of African Americans incarcerated with an average of 900,000 out of the 2.2 million incarcerateed being African American. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics 1 in 6 African American males has been incarcerated at some point in time as of the year 2001. In theory if this trend continues it is estimated that about 1 in 3 black males being born can be expected to spend time in prison and some point in his life. One in nine African American males between the ages of 25 and 29 are currently incarcerated. Although the rate of imprisonment for women is considerably lower than males African American women are incarc...
Aside from children, women stand as a special population of interest for organizations engaged in social work because of their being identified as a vulnerable group. One particular subpopulation of this group, which are women who are in prison, can quire understandably raise concerns because they can be left overlooked accidentally or even purposefully because of the stigma associated with criminal liability. In relation to this, the following sections will be providing a discussion on the history and context of sexual abuse of women in prison as well as the background and outcomes of a chosen project. The concluding portion of the paper will be providing a summary of the significant points made in the initial sections of the paper along
Men represent eight hundred ninety-six out of every one hundred thousand prison inmates, while women represent only fifty-six out of one hundred thousand. The rates have increased eight hundred percent since the war on drugs was initiated. Even among women prisoners, racial disparities are glaring. Hispanic and African American women have astronomically higher chances of incarceration than white women. Women are also more likely to be arrested for drug and economic crimes, such as possession or embezzlement (McGrath, 10/29). According to the chivalry hypothesis, the low rates of prosecuted female offenders reflect the leniency with which law enforcement treats women offenders (McGrath, 10/29). Gender differences in aggression and empathy play into the public perception of the ideal offender, and women do not fit the profile. Rather than applying the law equally across genders, police buy into the socially constructed view of women: meek, gentle, caring, empathic, and definitely not capable of cruel criminality (McGrath,
The main issue of this proposal that must be taken in consideration is that many critics argue that men become ignored by feminism and that the argument for non-custodial sentences is feminist exceptionalism at work (Reed, 2013). Many argue that attempting to keep only women out of prison could be seen as sexist towards men and not about equality. However, it is important that equality is understood as not about treating everyone the same, but about treating everyone in such a way that the outcome for both men and women can be the same (Corston, 2007). Consequently, catering to everyone’s individual needs and preventing them from a life of
Prison was designed to house and isolate criminals away from the society in order for our society and the people within it to function without the fears of the outlaws. The purpose of prison is to deter and prevent people from committing a crime using the ideas of incarceration by taking away freedom and liberty from those individuals committed of crimes. Prisons in America are run either by the federal, states or even private contractors. There are many challenges and issues that our correctional system is facing today due to the nature of prisons being the place to house various types of criminals. In this paper, I will address and identify three major issues that I believe our correctional system is facing today using my own ideas along with the researches from three reputable outside academic sources.