No country incarcerates more women than the United States. Although American women comprise just five percent of the total global female population, we represent nearly a third of the world’s female prisoners. In addition, the number of girls in youth facilities continues to rise even as male populations shrink, and increasing numbers of girls and women with children enter the civil immigration detention system. However, due to the size and scope of the male prison population in the age of mass incarceration, the unique challenges these women and girls face when they become involved in justice systems are often overlooked. Through the Gender & Justice in America blog series, Vera will explore issues facing justice-involved women and girls in the fields of adult corrections, youth justice, immigration, victimization, substance use, and mental health.
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Series: Gender and Justice in America
Sexual Assault Awareness is Key to Keeping Girls Out of the Juvenile Justice System
Series: Gender and Justice in America
Why We’re Working to Reduce the Number of Women Incarcerated at Rikers Island
Series: Gender and Justice in America
More Incarcerated Women Deserve Clemency
Former President Obama commuted the sentences of more people in one year than any other president in our nation’s history. The total number of clemencies—including pardons and sentence commutations granted? 1,715. The number of women granted clemency? 106. ...
Series: Gender and Justice in America
How the Criminalization of Adolescence Fuels the School-to-Prison Pipeline
In her new play on the school-to-prison pipeline, Notes from the Field, actress and playwright Anna Deveare Smith reenacts interviews with 17 people from the education and criminal justice systems. The school-to-prison pipeline is a national trend in which chi ...
Series: Gender and Justice in America
Breaking the silence about women in prison
We like to think incarcerated women are so different from the general population. But that’s simply not true. I often say: If you want to understand sexism in America, go to a women’s prison. Gender bias for incarcerated women is the same bias that forces free ...
Series: Gender and Justice in America
Mass Incarceration and its Impact Are Devastating to Women
9to5, National Association of Working Women—of which I am the Georgia chapter director—understands the devastating impact mass incarceration has on women. The rate of growth for female imprisonment has outpaced men by more than 50 percent between 1980 and 201 ...
Series: Gender and Justice in America
Transgender people at higher risk for justice system involvement
While recent police brutality headlines have motivated movements like #BlackLivesMatter and #SayHerName, activism surrounding transgender people has been pushed to the margins in mainstream media. In response to police violence against transgender people, #Bla ...
Series: Gender and Justice in America
The intersection of immigration and criminal justice for women, girls, and transgender people
Americans are currently in a self-reflective mood: Primary voting turnout for the 2016 Presidential election has so far been extremely robust, with no hint of slowing down—a sure sign people are invested in who we are and where we are going as a country. Relat ...
Series: Gender and Justice in America
The gendered, multigenerational impact of incarceration on education and the social capital of communities
It’s no coincidence that the number of Americans with college diplomas is the same as those with criminal records—the relationship between a lack of education and criminal justice involvement, especially for girls and women, is bi-directional, complex, and pro ...
Series: Gender and Justice in America
Ending the unjust treatment of girls charged with minor offenses
Since the early 90s, research has shown that girls in the juvenile justice system are more likely than their male peers to be detained for status offenses and minor delinquent behavior. The findings of a recent study by researchers at the University of Texas p ...
Series: Gender and Justice in America
Who pays in an offender-funded justice system?
A new report from the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and Research Action Design lays bare the significant impact that mass male incarceration has on women who remain in the community—a critically important and often overlooked aspect of our current offende ...
Series: Gender and Justice in America
Juvenile justice reform is not about boys vs. girls
When faced with the reality of the justice system’s impact on girls and the lack of reform efforts directed at girls’ unique pathways into the juvenile justice system, Russell Simmons—a longtime advocate for justice reform—acknowledged that he had not been pay ...
Series: Gender and Justice in America
Keeping families whole in German prisons
People visit the Mecklenberg-Western Pomerania region of northeastern Germany to see its sparkling lakes, sweeping fields, and charming coastal towns that flood with tourists in the summer. Most people do not go there to visit the incarcerated youth at its juv ...
Series: Gender and Justice in America
Women suffer when drug treatment focuses on men’s needs
In the last 10 years, heroin use among women has doubled, yet few drug treatment programs consider women’s unique needs and current punitive drug policies disproportionately entangle women of color and economically disadvantaged women in cycles of arrest, inca ...
Series: Gender and Justice in America
Alternatives to incarceration for moms aim to strengthen families
When mothers who act as primary caregivers serve time in prison, the loss of emotional and tangible support they provide—in the form of regular caretaking, income, housing, and more—can have a traumatic and disruptive impact on their families and communities. ...
Series: Gender and Justice in America
Reproductive justice should be included in reform efforts
After decades of mass incarceration, policymakers around the country are realizing the unintended consequences of using the criminal justice system to deal with the social and public health problems of homelessness, drug use, mental illness, and poverty. Despi ...
Series: Gender and Justice in America
A new blog series
No country incarcerates more women than the United States. Although American women comprise just five percent of the total global female population, we represent nearly a third of the world’s female prisoners—a rate that outstrips even America’s unprecedented ...