Essay On Gender Issues In Prison
No government system can fully be indiscriminate against two groups, and this is true in our legal system’s final destination: prison. In prison, the two binary genders face unique and distinct problems that the other gender may not face. While they both face different issues the biggest ones each faces leads to increased likelihood of recidivism, or going back to prison. The issues that the genders face in prison is noticeable, with considerable differences between men and women, yet there does not seem to be a consensus of whether or not these problems warrant change.
In prison, women face two major problems: drug abuse and mental health issues. Drug abuse issues exist in prison; since most of the sentencing that goes on in America is drug user-related, it is only logical that the problem of drug abuse and drug users would be concentrated in prison. A statistic from the American Psychology Association claims that, “75 percent of women met the criteria for substance abuse problems,” (Clark). This is a problem in prison hospitals and trained staff are lacking in order to help women with their drug addictions,
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Statistics put together by the American Psychology Association state that, “73 percent of women in state prisons and 75 percent in jails have mental health problems, compared with 55 percent and 63 percent of men, respectively,” (Clark). This means that three quarters of women have mental health problems. This is a problem since most of these problems go either undertreated or untreated. When these women get out of prison, they cannot successfully integrate back into society due to mental illness and then end up back in the prison system as they are likely to
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