Population of female inmates reaches record

Justice Department cites mandatory sentencing laws

by Ann Donahue

Nearly 75,000 women were serving prison sentences in the USA last year, a
record number that experts say is the result of mandatory sentencing
laws.

A recently released Justice Department report shows the number of women
in prison or awaiting mandatory sentences jumped to 74,730 in 1996, a
9.1% increase over 1995. Even so, women, who make up more than half the
population, constitute only 6.3% of the USA's total prison population.

Brenda Smith, director of the women in prison project at the National
Women's Law Center in Washington, D£., says mandatory prison time for
drug related crimes and truthinsentencing laws, which require convicted
criminals to serve a majority of their sentence, have led to the
increase.

The laws have been implemented over the past decade, spurred by federal
grants to states with tough sentences.

"States started following the federal guidelines, which were incredibly
harsh," Smith says.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, state courts give an
average maximum sentence of five years in prison for drug offenses.

"What you're seeing is the impact of sentencing laws. ... You don't have
any options if convicted of a drug offense," Smith says. "You're going to
prison."

Inmates in California, Texas, New York and Florida make up almost half
the female prison population. Twentyone states have more than 1,000
female prisoners.

Oklahoma has the highest percentage of female prisoners: 9.9% of the
state's inmate population, or 1,940 women. Jerry Massie, spokesman for
the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, says most women in that system
are in prison because of drug offenses.

The average sentence in Oklahoma for women is more than nine years,
excluding those who are serving prison terms without possibility of
parole and those who are on death row.

Nationwide, 69,614 of the women currently in prison are serving
sentences longer than one year, according to the Justice DepartmenL

For states with large prison populations, Texas had the biggest
percentage increase in female prisoners in 1996. The state's population
of female inmates jumped more than 25% last year, from 7,935 to 9,933.

That increase has led to overcrowding in several women's prisons in the
state, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

That's also the case in other states, including North Carolina, where
1,870 women are being held in six women's prisons that are operating at
100% to 150% of capacity. A new women's prison is expected to open next
month.

Charles Thomas, a professor of criminology at the University of Florida,
says the needs of incarcerated women often are overlooked because they
are still such a small percentage of the overall prison population.

"It puts a lot of the correctional system in a major bind," he says. "It
lacks the major capacity for women and it lacks the sufficient
sophisticated appreciation for programming needs of women.... The medical
needs are different (from those of men); the educational needs may be
different; and the vocational needs, although those are coming together,
are different."

In the corrections world, Thomas says, budget money usually goes first
to men's facilities and later to women's prisons. That, he says, can
"further marginalize the place of women in the system."