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- The population of women in state prisons has grown at more than twice the rate of the population of men in state prisons. Women account for approximately 10% of the 2.3 million incarcerated people in the U.S., but despite making up a relatively small percentage of the overall incarcerated population, the number of women in state prisons is growing at a much faster rate than men.
- Women are disproportionately incarcerated in jails where more than half of them have not yet been convicted of a crime and are still presumed innocent.
- Most incarcerated women are mothers. More than 60% of women in prison have children under the age of 18 and nearly 80% of women in jail are mothers, the Prison Policy Initiative reports.
- Two hundred and forty-one women have been exonerated since 1989. Of the 2,750 people who have been exonerated in the last three decades, about 9% were women, according to data from the National Registry of Exonerations.
- Jails Loom Large in Women’s Incarceration
- Women Disproportionately Stuck in Jails: Causes and Effects
- Ending Mass Incarceration Requires Looking at All Offenses — and All Women
- Mass Incarceration Targets Girls, Too
- Prison Is No Answer For Marginalized, Traumatized Women
- The Tentacles of Mass Incarceration Have A Long Reach
- The Need For More Data
- Acknowledgements
- About The Authors
- About The Prison Policy Initiative
A staggering number of women who are incarcerated are not even convicted: more than a quarter of women who are behind bars have not yet had a trial. Moreover, 60% of women in jails under local control have not been convicted of a crime and are awaiting trial. Aside from women under local authority (or jurisdiction), state and federal agencies also ...
Avoiding pretrial detention is particularly challenging for women. The number of unconvicted women stuck in jail is surely not because courts are considering women to be a flight risk, particularly when they are generally the primary caregivers of children. The far more likely answer is that incarcerated women, who have lower incomes than incarcera...
The numbers revealed by this report enable a national conversation about policies that impact women incarcerated by different government agencies and in different types of facilities. These figures also serve as the foundation for reforming the policies that lead to incarcerating women in the first place. Too often, the conversation about criminal ...
Of the girls confined in youth facilities, nearly 1 in 10 are held for status offenses, such as “running away, truancy, and incorrigibility.” Among boys, status offenses account for just 3% of the confined population. These statistics are particularly troubling because status offenses tend to be simply responses to abuse.12 As is the case with wome...
About half of confined women and girls are held in state and federal prisons. In general, women in prison are serving longer sentences than those in jails, and they are often located far from their families and friends. Even in geographically large states like Montana and Arizona, sometimes there is just one facility for women, making visits diffic...
Even the “whole pie” of incarceration in the chart above represents just one small portion (18%) of the women under any form of correctional control, which includes 808,700 women on probation or parole. Again, this is in stark contrast to the total correctional population (mostly men), where one-third (34%) of all people under correctional control ...
The picture of women’s incarceration is far from complete, and many questions remain about mass incarceration’s unique impact on women. This report offers the critical estimate that a quarter of all incarcerated women are unconvicted. But — since the federal government hasn’t collected the key underlying data in almost 20 years— is that number grow...
The Prison Policy Initiative would like to thank the ACLU Campaign for Smart Justice for their partnership over the years in producing the Women’s Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie report series. The organization also thanks the MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge, and all of the donors, researchers, programmers and designers who he...
Aleks Kajstura is Legal Director at the Prison Policy Initiative. She directs the organization’s campaign to end prison gerrymandering (the practice of using prison populations to distort democracy via redistricting). Aleks has also published several reports on women’s incarceration, including previous versions of Women’s Mass Incarceration: The Wh...
The non-profit, non-partisan Prison Policy Initiative was founded in 2001 to expose the broader harms of mass criminalization and spark advocacy campaigns to create a more just society. Through big-picture reports like Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie, as well as in-depth reports on issues such as medical neglect behind bars and bail reform, the o...
Apr 3, 2023 · Fact Sheet. Incarcerated Women and Girls. By Niki Monazzam and Kristen M. Budd, Ph.D. April 3, 2023. Research on female incarceration is critical to understanding the full consequences of mass incarceration and to unraveling the policies and practices that lead to their criminalization.
Dec 12, 2007 · With more than one million women behind bars or under the control of the criminal justice system, women are the fastest growing segment of the incarcerated population increasing at nearly double the rate of men since 1985.
Nov 28, 2018 · More than 85 percent of women in prison reported some physical or sexual trauma in their lifetime. Increase awareness of pregnancy programs for inmates. Just 37 percent of pregnant inmates...
Mar 5, 2024 · In the U.S., women are held in 446 state prisons, 27 federal prisons, 3,116 local jails, 1,323 juvenile correctional facilities, 80 Indian country jails, and 80 immigration detention facilities, as well as in military prisons, civil commitment centers, and prisons in the U.S. territories.
Mar 1, 2023 · Significant numbers of women in prison end up there after being disadvantaged as children: 12% report homelessness before they turned 18; 19% were in foster care at some point; and 43% came from families that received welfare or other public assistance.
