ipl-logo

Women Should NOT Be Used To Create More Alternatives To Prison

621 Words3 Pages

It is believed that because of the unique problems that women have, they should be given more alternatives to prison. Unique has been defined as “having no like, or equal” or “not typical, or unusual.” Typically when we think of unique problems, we assume that they are problems with exceptional circumstances, thought that is not always the case.

According to the crc website, “more than 25% of women sentenced to a prison are sentenced for property offences such as shoplifting or fraud. Others are sentenced for “moral” and public order offences, drinking offences or drug offences. Only 9% of women have committed violent offences and these are primarily minor assaults. On average, women receive shorter sentences than men.

When the unique problems are brought up by the females, the primary one is usually regarding their children. However, this is not only a problem for women, as there are many single fathers who face this problem as well that are not offered any alternatives to prison or alternatives within the prison. Using the excuse that women should have more alternatives just because they have given birth to a child should not be a valid argument. …show more content…

Usually the mental issues that are faced by women in prison are quite different than those of men. Though understandably these issues are quite serious, it should not be used to create more alternatives. I found an example in the course pack which states that “many women are survivors of childhood and adult abuse and the post-traumatic effects of that abuse often affects their mental health.” Agreed that women suffer abuse which leads to mental issues, but this is not just an issue for women alone. Men suffer as well, but how likely is it that we will see them being rewarded with alternatives? Not very likely at

Show More
Related
526 Words | 3 Pages

“A Woman Doing Life” is a unique book that describes and understands the experiences of incarcerated women. The author, Erin George, herself got arrested with charge of murder of her husband and was sentenced to prison for 603 years. She portrayed the true picture of how women, especially those with no criminal backgrounds, seek their identity in this ‘no exit’ place and find ways to adapt harsh painful circumstances in female correctional setting. It is a common misconception that officers of such institutions are always taking advantage of incarcerated women for the satisfaction of their own sexual desires. But, the real picture is not as bad as it is perceived.

Read More
806 Words | 4 Pages

The women who have children are most likely go into foster care, which lead to the separation of families. Data proves “that a child with an incarcerated father is 4 times more likely to face foster system contact and 5 times more likely if the mother is incarcerated” (Raeder, 2012). When these children go into foster care women often lose contact of their children and even children who have multiple siblings get separated by them in foster care. In addition Kerman describes on mother’s day how there is large groups of families in the visiting room. Some of these women’s families “lacked the resources to come and visit even though many of them lived in New York City” (Kerman 2011).

Read More
713 Words | 3 Pages

This angers me as women are powerless in this situation, have to conform to the opinions of the police and are trapped in an unsafe environment with officers who can blackmail and exploit them. Also, women cannot escape this situation and cannot even feel somewhat comfortable. This travels back to the idea of their mental health being impacted in an environment where women constantly feel watched and uncomfortable. In a final analysis, the novel Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson is packed with reasons and raises the question of why certain groups are being wrongfully imprisoned, either due to gender, race, or a psychiatric disability, along with a multitude of other discriminatory factors used to wrongfully confine

Read More
1191 Words | 5 Pages

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).

Read More
1191 Words | 5 Pages

Furthermore, the failure to address mental health needs within the prison system exacerbates these issues. The Equal Justice Initiative reveals that more than half of all Americans in prison or jail have a mental illness. Prison officials often fail to provide correct treatment, resorting to physical force and solitary confinement, which can worsen mental health problems. The Equal Justice Initiative reveals, “More than half of all Americans in prison or jail have a mental illness. Prison officials often fail to provide appropriate treatment for people whose behavior is difficult to manage, instead resorting to physical force and solitary confinement, which can aggravate mental health problems.”

Read More
620 Words | 3 Pages

Women get treated differently in a prison system, but they also experience their sentences differently too. For woman the facilities are smaller and further away from their love ones. This is in hope that the women will rehabilitated so they are not away anymore. In most cases woman are serving shorter sentences than men are for the same type of crime. This again is in hopes that the woman will change her ways so that she can go home to her children.

Read More
161 Words | 1 Pages

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.

Read More
268 Words | 2 Pages

Through the years and through inmate experiences few things are changing for female and identified mentally ill offenders. From years past, Caucasian women offenders were seen as “pious and naïve of the evils” (Hanser, 2013), and African-American women offenders were more likely to face incarceration for wrongful actions. However, women, in general, did not hold the largest offender numbers like their male counter-offenders. From the RH REALITY CHECK Internet article, written by Sharona Coutts and Zoe Greenberg, in March of 2015, “In 2010, Black women were incarcerated at nearly three times the rate of white women . . .” While women incarceration rates increase, the conditions of the institutions still lack the necessities for women and

Read More
1300 Words | 6 Pages

Introduction 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.

Read More
766 Words | 4 Pages

Johannes Kepler, a famous mathematician, astronomer, and astrologer, was born on December 27, 1571 in the small town of Weil der Stadt in Germany. He was a big part of the 17th century scientific revolution. He was a very religious man and can be described as innovative and someone that could brighten social meetings with his bright and enlightening ideas. Kepler made huge contributions to how we interpret and study the solar system today. One of his most well-known discoveries is his laws of planetary motion.

Read More
2717 Words | 11 Pages

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.

Read More
472 Words | 2 Pages

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.

Read More
1435 Words | 6 Pages

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.

Read More
1313 Words | 6 Pages

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

Read More
1002 Words | 5 Pages

No government system can fully be indiscriminate against two groups, and this is true in our legal system’s final destination: prison. In prison, the two binary genders face unique and distinct problems that the other gender may not face. While they both face different issues the biggest ones each faces leads to increased likelihood of recidivism, or going back to prison. The issues that the genders face in prison is noticeable, with considerable differences between men and women, yet there does not seem to be a consensus of whether or not these problems warrant change.

Read More

More about Women Should NOT Be Used To Create More Alternatives To Prison

Related Topics

Open Document