Women, Prison, and Sexual Assault

Assessing the consequences of our country’s soaring imprison rates has less to do with the question of guilt versus innocence than it does with the question of who among us truly deserves to go to prison and face the restrictive and sometimes brutally repressive conditions found there. We are adding more than one thousand prisoners to our prison and jail systems every single week. The number of women in prisons and jails has reached a sad new milestone. As women become entangled with the war on drugs, the number in prison has increased if not double the rate of incarceration for men. The impact of their incarceration devastates thousands of children, who lose their primary caregiver when Mom goes to prison.

Statistics are invaluable for students like me, when we have to prove what we are talking about, what we are talking about is not about anecdotal information or the observation of trends. When it comes to prisons, statistics have become their own version of a double-edged sword. Why, the numbers distorted, when it comes to women who are incarcerated for violent crime and the disparity of reducing the sentences or equal treatment since the reality of the economic needs and the fact that women are more likely to be victimized prior to their offense. For instance, most female offenders are less likely to have high paying jobs therefore; bail for even menial crimes is harder to pay for females, especially, if they are the primary caregiver of a child. Food, clothing, diapers which is more important that or bail?

Women in prison need to rehabilitate which involves or should foster relationships, men on the other hand need vocation, but when it comes to establishing goals for gender specifics sentencing there is...

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... mention the health risks of not having protection, when you consider that females were participating in ninety percent of the occurrences of sexual crimes by personnel is it no wonder our institutions incidences are epidemic.

Works Cited

Foster, B. (2006). Corrections; The Fundamentals. Upper Saddle River: Pearson.

Grimm, A. (2013, June 07). High rate of sexual assault at Joliet youth prison, survey finds. Chicago, Illinios, United States.

Person, D. (2012, June 26). Column: Nightmare of prison rape. Retrieved November 22, 2013, from USA Today: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/story/2012-06-26/prison-rape-sexual-assault/55844922/1

Sanders, E., & Donifon, R. (2011). Children of Incarcerated Parents. Cornell University: Cornell Cooperative Extension.

Simmons, C. W. (2000). Children of Incarcerated Parents. California Research Bureau, 1-11.