This article, written by William Spelman, focuses on the controversial relationship between prison populations and crime rates. Spelman demonstrates the controversy by referencing studies that yielded a wide array of results ranging from rising prison populations causing a decrease in crime to having no effect at all, and even a study that showed crime increasing as prison populations did. Spelman states that this controversy has long been present when discussing this issue. He expresses concern with the divergent findings due to the fact that they are largely all based on the same data set. This, Spelman believes, is largely due to the fact that the varying studies used different methods in conducting their research. For this reason, Spelman seeks to test the remaining methods in order to determine the most appropriate specification for the crime equation.
The health care system services in the prison has many flaws in the services that they provide for the prisoners, which can varies among individual by sex, race, and others account. According to Young (2000), “The majority of women in U.S. prisons belong to groups which systematically experience race, class, and, of course, gender oppression. On an individual level, the institutionalized nature of oppression means that people are not afforded the same opportunities to pursue economic, social, and personal well-being” (p. 220). The rate of incarceration females in prison and jails per 100,000 were black females 260 per 100,000, Hispanic females 133 per 100,000, and White female were 91 per 100,000 (US Department of Justice, 2015).The health
Typically female prisons are less violent compared to male prisons. A majority of women that are incarcerated are there because of drug or property offenses. Women usually commit less violent crimes compared to men who are more likely to commit violent crimes. “Because most women serve time for drug offenses rather than violent crimes, they tend to serve shorter prison sentences, (Study.com).” The female prison population in France and the U.S. is lower then that of the male population. Women who are incarcerated tend to have a higher chance of being mentally/emotionally unstable.
Women population don't get offer the same programs as male . The small population of women in prison and jail is used to justify the lack of diverse education, Vocational and other programs available to incarcerated women . This is also effect the specialization in treatment and failure to segregate the more serious and mentally ill offenders from the less serious offenders. In
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
Gender should not depend on how people get treated differently from the opposite gender. If someone commits a crime regardless of their gender, they both should have to face the consequences regarding the crime they committed. A male should not be treated different than a female after committing a crime just because he is male and visa versa. Gender discrepancies play a role in everything in our world today. Whether it be in crime, sports, school, or even careers, males are typically punished much harder than females, and also get the most credit when it comes to sports, school, and their careers compared to females who excel in the exact same thing males do, even if the females are better than the males in any of those fields.
Angela Davis in her book, Are Prisons Obsolete?, argues for the overall abolishment of prisons. Amongst the significant claims that support Davis’ argument for abolition, the inadequacy of prison reforms stands out as the most compelling. Reform movements truthfully only seek to slightly improve prison conditions, however, reform protocols are eventually placed unevenly between women and men. Additionally, while some feminist women considered the crusade to implement separate prisons for women and men as progressive, this reform movement proved faulty as female convicts increasingly became sexually assaulted. Following the theme of ineffectiveness, the reform movement that advocated for a female approach to punishment only succeeded in strengthening
In the context of gender disparity in criminal sentencing, some may think that having said that criminal courts are more lenient on women is just one’s opinion. In fact, a lot of researches and data suggest that there is a strong different in gender in the sentencing outcomes. Men are sentenced to longer prison terms than women. Men are 42% more likely to be sentenced to prison. Critics suggest that federal courts show more leniency on female defendants in a lot of court cases. They are less likely to imprison or confine women and tend to give women shorter sentences than men. A research states that men receive 63% longer sentences on average than women do. Researches show that women are twice as
International prison population statistics have found that the female prison population is increasing at a faster rate than the male prison population. Research has confirmed that, in the majority of countries, the male imprisonment rate is predominantly larger than that of the female imprisonment rate, however this does not apply to indigenous women within Australia. Overwhelming research shows that the imprisonment rate for indigenous women within Australia has increased at a significantly faster rate compared to indigenous males, most clearly highlighted through the general trends in prison rates within the last decade. This essay will discuss how the presence of indigeneity plays a key role in explaining the disparity between male and female imprisonment rates, further explaining why indigenous women are incarcerated at significantly highly rates. Moreover, there are numerous sociological and criminological theories, which provide an explanation for the disparity of male and female imprisonment rates. Furthermore, this essay will also discuss the social implications of these prison population trends in relation to criminal justice polices, other social policies related to
Probation and parole officers have the authority to supervise and report the offenders who are in the probation and parole period. Both officers perform the same duties with different types of individuals. According to Pollock (2010), "They have the authority and power to recommend revocation" (p. 391). The parole officers can make decisions upon any recommandation as they deal with the supervision of individuals who are in their parole period and probation officer supervises individuals who have not been sent to
Did you know that there are roughly 165,824,620 women currently alive in the United States as of this year, women make up about 50.6% of the population? But did you also know that there are 219,000 women locked up in our current Criminal Justice System? Where nationally, we lock up 8 times the amount of woman than we do men. That’s a lot of mothers, daughters, sisters, and aunts locked up. Many of these woman that are currently incarcerated have at some point in their lives experienced some sort of mental, physical, and sexual abuse. Women of color are also 5 times more likely to get incarceration than their white counter parts. The era of mass incarceration is stronger than ever here are that facts and solutions to this problem.
According to Dowden & Andrews (1999), since 2010, there has been a growing concern over the increasing rate of incarceration for women: an alarming rate of 3.4 percent annually. Some experts like Kruttschnitt (2010) explain that the growth of incarcerated women population is due mainly to two major factors; one contributor to this phenomenon is the war on drugs. As politicians are passing more aggressive anti-drug policies and as police are cracking down on drug offenders, increasing amounts of women are being caught with illegal substances. The second reason is the the switch from indeterminate sentencing to determinate sentencing which is forcing women to stay in prison for longer than is necessary. This is more apparent because
By the late nineteenth century it became clear that the ideology of penal reform that had held together the framework of the penitentiary was dissolving. Progressive reformers realized the values and strategies that once were effective in battling the tumultuous effect of urbanization, industrialization, and mass immigration to be ineffective. The theories proposed by psychologist Sigmund Freud and naturalist Charles Darwin launched a new conversation in the reform community. Reformers such as Brockway turned to this new “scientific knowledge” in order to combat the crumbling notions of reform, pushing progressive strategies to focus on the nature of the offender, rather then the offence (Blomberg & Lucken, 2010, pp.61-71).
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.
The United States of America contains the third largest population in the world, which contradicts the fact that the United States has the largest prison population in the world (Aliprandini, and Finley). The fact that their prison population is so large alludes to the reason they would have a strong parole system. Due to contrary belief, this is not the case. Furthermore, the parole system is known to have a multitude of problems laced within it, these problems can be solved by focusing on parolee and parole officer relationships, and partaking in systems that improve the underlying issues. Following through to fix these affairs may seem unrealistic, but a solution could be in sight.