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Essays on women prisons
Essays on women prisons
Essays on women prisons
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Essays on women prisons
Essays on women prisons
Essays on women prisons
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Recommended: Essays on women prisons
On April 21st, 1930, Ohio State Penitentiary, which was built in Ohio’s capital, Columbus, in 1834, caught fire and killed hundreds of inmates. When returning for the night, they discovered that a fire was started within cell blocks G and H. It was only after the fire had been doused, that everyone had realized that the scaffolding, on the outside walls of those cell blocks, was what had caught fire. At the time, the prison was known for its poor conditions. The prison was only meant to hold 1,500 people, but at the time of the fire, it was housing 4,300 inmates. This disaster goes down in history as the worst fire at any prison in the United States.
(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.
Furthermore,these court systems are not prejudice against gender because they both want the same thing, justice. If they have been wanting everything equal with men then they should make sure they get the same equalness in prison. An example of a serial killer that got what she deserved was Aileen Wuornos. She had her trail about killing more than one person and received the death penalty because of her actions ("Aileen Wuornos”). She was charged with 1st degree murder because she murdered 5 people, making her a serial killer.
There is obviously a very large and obvious difference between the amount of male offenders that are convicted of a capital crime and sentenced to death as compared to females. The truth is that a man and a woman could commit the very same crime and the man would get the harsher punishment, all because of gender. Females are portrayed as the weaker sex, fueled by emotions and clearly not able to reign in their feelings. To say that a woman is more likely to commit a crime of passion and not be a serial criminal is absurd. They are just as likely to commit the same crimes as a man; they are just held to different standards that male offenders are.
It can be said they have double punishment for being incarcerated, confinement because they committed a crime and being removed of their right to raise and care for their children (Vainik, 2008). On the other words, it appear does not fair if they have to stop also being a mother while serving their sentence. It’s easier for the society to give punished and put “bad mother” labelling for the incarcerated mother, rather than to look through the reason why they were committed to crime. Based on my data from 120 incarcerated women, 80 % incarcerated mothers committed to crime because of family’s financial problems reason. Later it described as feminization of poverty.
Kandyce Mullings Prof. Stollman Enc1102 T R 3:30 Research Paper April 19, 2016 Prison Born: Research Paper Imagine finding out you are pregnant and instead of shopping for cute maternity outfits you’re wearing a black and white jumpsuit. According to American Journal of Public Health, “between 6 and 10 percent of incarcerated women are pregnant; in one year alone, 1,400 women gave birth while incarcerated in the United States.” Some might not even know that they’re pregnant. Kebby Warner is a 25-year-old married prisoner in Michigan who was imprisoned for littering and passing a $350 stolen check.
Stereotypes are everywhere. Just like black Americans are stereotyped to always be associated with violent crimes, females are stereotyped as only committing non-violent and “small” crimes, like shoplifting, if they even tried to commit a crime. However, men are associated with more violent crimes. Sexism is another considerable inequality in the criminal justice system. Melissa Thompson researched this topic and found that “...the likelihood of mental health placement significantly increases if female prisoners engage in prison violence and/ or other role-incongruent aggressive acts (Baskin et al. 1989).
Also, less pay because I’m a woman sounds unfair also. I’m glad that women had the courage to fight for their rights and prove that they deserve to be treated equally as men. Female inmates endure many obstacles and just as much stress as men. Women have hormone and changes with their bodies that they must tackle quite often. It is not uncommon for a woman to become pregnant in prison or enter the prison system expecting a child.
Many researches and studies are focusing on criminals and how certain actions are crucial to the experiments. While a lot of Genders and Punishments Prisoners all experience jail or prison in many different ways. One common difference between different prisons are the one specific gender facilities. If they are put
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.
Imagine being a child who has not seen their father in years. Not being able to celebrate holidays with a loved one and being a fatherless child. Especially being a black child of an incarceration black male there are many stereotypes that set you aside from other people. For many years in the criminal justice system in America it has been undergoing a massive growth. According the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) there are over two million black men in jail and most of them stay there for a life time.
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.
Women may receive more assistant and help post prison compared to men since women typically are not as psychologically as stable compared to men. Men should also be offered this same options as the women are instead of being stereotyped into one category as everyone being the same as one another. People believe that more women are offered more assistance after being released from jail compared to men because men typically want to play the “tough man” role to prove that they do not need any help compared to women once being released from jail. Another factor to as why women receive more options compared to men is that women are usually more targeted by those who they may have gotten to know in jail or even prior to being in jail and also tend to be a victim rather than being a recurring
Feminist theory shows the ways of a gender structured life . This culture is also displayed in Crime and Punishment by Sonya and Dunya. Feminist criticism is a type of literary criticism that was well known in the 1970’s. Women would begin taking apart the classics and analyzing how the author portrayed women. The women in Crime and Punishment , especially Sonya and Dunya have a stronger state of mind and are able to handle the pressures and struggles of life better than the men in the novel.
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.