Pros And Cons Of The Incarceration Of Women

The incarceration of women is a very interesting subject that I have not thought about much. According to Stephanie Covington “ The rate of incarceration for women has increased dramatically (tripling in the last decade)”.( Covington,2007). This has happened so quickly and our criminal justice system certainly has not been able to acclimatize. Throughout this paper we will talk about how I feel that the criminal justice is failing women, what I think we can do to decline the trend of women being incarcerated, as well as what programs I think would be great to go into place for incarcerated women. Firstly from the research that I have done on this tpic it seems that women are harshly sentenced, when they have very little to do with a crime.

She had no prior criminal history and was seven months pregnant at the time of her sentence. Smith met her boyfriend five years before that when she was a sophomore at Hampton University and did not have any knowledge that he was the leader of a crack cocaine ring.

Smith later grew aware of her boyfriend’s illegal activities and made several unsuccessful attempts to leave him. Over the course of the relationship, he regularly abused her both physically and emotionally, once choking her so badly that the blood vessels in her cheeks popped. In the end, Smith pleaded guilty to conspiracy, although she never sold or used drugs. However, she did lie and break the law for him.”

This quote is such a great exanple of how a majority of women have ended up incarcerated as a result of this war we have on drugs. A lot of drug traffickers are in abusive relationships with this women and forcing them to do illegal things. These women are so scared of leaving these relationships, because they have probably been thratened with death, that they just do whatever is asked of

Women have much different needs than men, both psychologically and physically. First example I am going to use is that menstrating women need sanitary products to keep themselves clean duing their cycle. Why should that be something that they have to buy in prison? It is not their fault that they are menstrating? What if they do not have any money that week? What happens? Do they have to use a random shirt? I am not sure, although that does sound gross. It is sad that it took until 2017 for the criminal justice system to provide women with free tampons and pads. Now before 2017 I do believe that they were provide with small limited amounts, but this is a hygeine problem. Some women have long cycles and that would be a sanitary issue if they had to wear a pad or tampon for an extended amonut of time, becasuee they were afraid that they would not have anything else to use. Now also just to point this out this was a federal prison law, therefore; state prisons still have to deal with alimited number. Now on the the psychological needs of women. To start off our crimnial justoce system is not too focused on the psychological needs of anyone, much less women. I feel that the criminal justice system has a lot of rooom for improvement when it comes to the rehabilitatioin aspect. These women are being pubished for what