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It would be impossible to understand women’s imprisonment without looking back to its history. During the sixteenth century English jails were in awful conditions, there was no segregation of inmates. Men, women, children, the mentally ill, physically sick, the serious offenders and the petty offenders were all housed in the same place (Moynahan and Stuart, Pg. 4). Slavery and the Colonial Penal System were a period when America was being colonized; an era when not only the rules of religious and secular beliefs rule, but also of the rules of slavery. Blacks were being sold to slavery.
Anthem Palace vs U.S Prisons Many people believe that prison holds the most dangerous people in the world. That might not be true because Anthem tells a different story entirely.. Anthem by Ayn Rand is about a dystopian society where if anybody does something wrong or commits a transgression they either get sentenced death or prison, which is known as The Palace of Corrective Detention. This where the protagonist Equality was sent. Modern day U.S society is much more progressive than Anthem’s society because of security, inmate treatment and construction.
(Moulds, 1978) This leads to women getting less harsh punishments than their male counterparts. So, one could argue that this need to protect women is actually hurting them, and society in general. When they are given lighter sentences, women learn that they can get away with more, because of the leniency they are given in the system. However, taking a step back and looking at the way media treats women vs men tells a very different story.
Angela Davis demonstrates the ongoing violent abuse as she quotes a report on sexual maltreatment in women’s prisons, “We found that male correctional employees have vaginally, anally, and orally raped female prisoners and sexually assaulted and abused them” (Davis 78). However disturbing this blunt sexual contact that male officers take with the vulnerable prisoners may be, the officers adopt even more severe tactics to harass and abuse the women as they often utilize “mandatory pat-frisks or room searches to grope women 's breasts, buttocks, and vaginal areas...” (Davis 79). To add insult to injury, women are virtually incapable of escaping from their abuser(s). Prison employees upkeep their inappropriate behavior as it is believed they will “rarely be held accountable, administratively or criminally” (Davis 78).
Feminist criminology has been around since the late 1960's and started out centered on speculations brought upon traditional theories of crime. Most traditional theories didn't necessarily ignore women in the criminal justice system yet they generalized crime and what causes a person to turn to crime so that women who commit crimes are overlooked by the generalization. Not only are the numbers skewed when you look at gender in criminal justice offenders but there is also a certain bias in the criminal justice systems workers. In the movie Vera Drake there is a clear example of this when the investigator and the officer come into the movie. While watching you can easily assume that the female officer is treated and thought of much differently
This website covers the issue of prison overpopulation. This issue affects prisons all across the country. The first feature the website provides a list of each of the fifty states. Choosing a state will take you to a page that provides the number of incarcerated prisoners currently being held and the total cost to run the prison per day. The website also has a section that has articles explaining why prison overcrowding is a problem.
Poor living conditions in prisons emerged because judges were inclined to send more people to prison than the space that was provided. Therefore, prisons became over crowed and hard to handle. Living spaces in prisons got smaller and more prisoners has to share their place with someone else. Security at the prisons also fell downhill, as male guards saw the women and young children as prey for rape. Most prisoners were either brutally assaulted and/or rape while in
Unfortunately, there are racial disparities in the United States in the legal system. Prison sentences imposed on African American males in the federal system are nearly 20 percent longer than white males convicted of similar crimes. The 1994 Crime Bill signed by President Clinton established mandatory minimum sentences. African American and Latino offenders sentenced in state and federal courts face greater odds of incarceration than white offenders who are in similar situations and receive longer sentences than whites in some jurisdictions. Research has shown that race plays a significant role in determination on which homicide cases resulted in death sentences.
The study also says that among female inmates one third of them have some type of mental disorder. In prisons and jails, prisoners sit in their cells majority
Patricia O 'Brien 's article on We should stop putting women in jail. For anything is not practical. The article title was misleading and the article focused on women should not be incarcerated for nonviolent crimes and getting rid of women 's prisons. The examination of women in U.S. prisons reveals that majority are nonviolent offenders with poor education, little employment experiences and abuse from childhood to adulthood. She said the United States is a prison nation and have more than 1.5 million people incarcerated.
Their bonds were set at amounts that were 54 percent lower than what men were required to pay. • Women were 58 percent less likely to be sentenced to prison. • For defendants who were sentenced to prison, there generally was no gender disparity in the length of the sentence. There were disparities in sentencing for some individual types of crime, however. For example, female defendants convicted of theft received longer prison sentences than male defendants convicted of theft.
Women of color in prison are treated more unfairly than white women. Women in prison don’t have it easy obviously, but especially women of color. With many coming out with their stories of the racial discrimination treatment from prison staff vs white female prison inmate. Recently in the years the female population goes up as the increase of women of color. It may seem that it just so happen that women of color are treated more unfairly them white women in prison.
Women of color are the most targeted, prosecuted, and imprisoned women in the country and rapidly increasing their population within the prison systems. According to Nicholas Freudenberg, 11 out of every 1000 women will end up incarcerated in their lifetime, the average age being 35, while only five of them are white, 15 are Latinas, and 36 are black. These two groups alone make up 70 percent of women in prison, an astonishing rate compared to the low percentage comprise of within the entire female population in the country (1895). Most of their offenses are non-violent, but drug related, and often these women come from oppressive and violent backgrounds, where many of their struggles occurred directly within the home and from their own family.
Especially in areas like Baltimore, where female correctional officers make up seventy five percent of workers. The problem with female correctional officers is they are being used and manipulated by inmates and smuggle in contraband from the outside. Inmates prey on young officers, they look for females with low self-esteem and confidence. In addition, it is also noted that in Baltimore sixty to seventy-five percent of female officers have inappropriate sexual relationships and bring drugs and cellphones to gang members. Even though the relationships between inmates and guards appear to be consensual they are overall still initiated by the gang members.
There are many indicators of the huge impact in disparities in sentencing women as compared to men and more so when it revolves around minorities ( race and class). Though there are lower crime rates among women as compared to men, there are significant disparities which tend to show favouritism to women. Research has shown that men get 63 per cent longer custodial sentences than women. In addition, it is twice more likely to have women get non custodial sentences even after conviction. However, as mentioned the disparities are more profound when issues of race and class are intertwined in the sentencing.
