According to Judith Greene’s article, “Part I: Growth Trends and Recent Research”, “The imprisonment boom that began in the late 1970s has swelled the state and federal prison system to more than 1.4 million prisoners. Adding those held in local jails and other lockups (juvenile facilities, immigrant detention, etc.) the total number of people behind bars rises to almost 2.3 million – of which seven percent are women. At the end of 2004, 96,125 women were serving state or federal sentences – almost nine times the number in prison in 1977.” (Greene 1)
“As has been the case since the first prisons were built, women constitute a minority of America’s prison populations, currently accounting for 6.6 percent of the total, up from about 4 percent in 1925” (Britton 23) The number of women in prison has increased a lot faster than the number of men in prison because of how few women were in prison when men started being placed in prison. They did not start off at the same time, therefore leaving the number of women in prison to increase at a quicker pace than men.
When prisons were constructed they were not constructed with women in mind at all. Nothing about prisons were structured around women. “Neither the physical structures of these institutions nor their disciplinary regimes had been designed with women in mind, however. Administrators treated women either as afterthoughts or as annoyances. Reformers’ and legislatures’ mandate to separate the sexes in congregate institutions worked to disadvantage women, as wardens placed them in makeshift quarters away from the main (men’s) inmate population. (Britton 28) So, once you establish something a certain way and continue to perform those practices for awhile, it is hard to break away from them and start something new. That is why in institutions today, women are still treated like that in daily practices.
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