Blog 15

The United States is one of the very few modernized countries with such a high incarceration rate; most of the offenders are there for non violent crimes such as drug possession. Back when the United States first started incarceration men and women were there for multitudes of crimes, they were different ethnicities and had different occupations. This is interesting since now most prisoners are minority males on drug and possession charges. You could say there was more diversity in the prison system back in the late 1800’s.

Prisons now are flooded with minorities’ not just men but also women. The prison rates have sky rocketed looking at just the difference between now and the 70s. Each year the rate of women in prison grows, although they still make up the smaller percentage of inmates. The number is made only more obvious with the number of male prisons and the number of female prisons a couple thousand more for the men. The growth of women in prison can be blamed on a multitude of societal ills like amped up aggression and violence in the media, bad economic times, but also the fact that sentencing used to be a lot lighter for females. They could get away with a lot more, with judges going lightly on the females, now with laws in place that are (more) gender blind that has stopped and the rates of imprisonment go up. What is very interesting is that the rate of females incarcerated are highest in states like Montana, Arizona, Idaho and Oklahoma these aren’t ‘podunk’ states but I expected New York and California to be on that list. They have high violence and crime rates, (so does AZ) but maybe more women are getting arrested on other charges then violence and drugs? I also think that female incarceration rates have increased because of the lack of programs to rehabilitate, women seem to do better in these programs that don’t have much place in the prison systems in the U.S. but since they have been cut out no one male or female can benefit.