Recently released from the Vera Institute of Justice:
The number of women in jail—most of them mothers—is growing faster than any other group behind bars, but has largely been overlooked from reform efforts, a new report released from the Vera Institute of Justice and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge reveals. The number of women in jail in the U.S. has grown 14-fold since 1970 and continues to rise, even as the number of men in jail has begun to decline. Amid increasing national attention to the overuse of local jails as a driver of mass incarceration, this report takes stock of what we do know about women in jail in order to begin to reframe the conversation to include them. It found that the experiences women have in jail can exacerbate the problems that contributed to their incarceration in the first place—trauma, mental illness, single-parenthood, and poverty—and that more research is needed in order to understand what interventions work to set women on a better path. For more, watch a video about the report's findings.
Highlights from the report include:
Access the full report
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For additional resources on Justice-Involved Women go to NIC’s Women Offenders.
This blog is funded by a contract from the National Institute of Corrections, U.S. Department of Justice. Points of view or opinions stated in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.