Disadvantages Of Women In Prison

As a nation, policies, and legislation have been implemented in order to better shape human behavior. However, in spite of laws and policy, the sudden rises in incarceration have included women more so than ever before. According to (Beck, Karberg, & Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2001, p.1) and (Guerino, Sabol, Harrison, & Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2011, p.1) women in prison increased by 646% between 1980 and 2010. Since 1870, when the first female prison was established, the female prison population has grown according the International Centre for Prison Studies(2012) nearly a third of all female prisoners worldwide are incarcerated in the United States of America. Currently there are 201,200 women in US prisons, representing 8.8 percent of the total American prison population (Walmsley, 2012). Similarly, as other countries have high female incarceration rates as well. For example, China comes a very distant second to the United States with 84,600 female prisoners …show more content…
Unfortunately, some of these women in prison experienced domestic violence, trauma, substance abuse and mental health problems. As a result to these negative characters, some social factors place them at a social and economic disadvantage according to Kruttschnitt (2010). Consequently, this contributes to the rising number of women in prison. Many women of this population share common characterics. Some of these characterics are usually poverty, single mothers and homelessness and lack of education sources. (gender response). While in incarcerated women, are faced emotional pan and low self-esteem. Some of these emotions are due directly to prison. Criminologists have argued that the prison system is ill-equipped to deal with these problems and that these issues are better managed outside the punitive environment of the prison Owen and Bloom