REPORT: MORE WOMEN IMPRISONED

Longer Sentences Crowd Prisons

WASHINGTON -- The number of women in state and federal prisons is at
an all-time high and growing fast, with the incarceration rate for
females increasing at nearly twice that of men, the government
reported Sunday. There were 101,179 women in prisons last year, 3.6
percent more than in 2002, the Justice Department said. That marks the
first time the women's prison population has topped 100,000, and
continues a trend of rapid growth.

Overall, men are still far more likely than women to be in jail or
prison, and black men are more likely than any other group to be locked up.

At the end of 2003, U.S. prisons held 1,368,866 men, the Bureau of
Justice Statistics reported. The total was about 2 percent more than
in 2002.

Longer sentences, especially for drug crimes, and fewer prisoners
granted parole or probation are main reasons for the expanding U.S.
prison population, said Marc Mauer, assistant director of The
Sentencing Project, which advocates alternatives to long prison terms
for many kinds of crimes.

The increase began three decades ago and continues. The new report
compared 2003 figures with those from 1995.

The number of women in prison has grown 48 percent since 1995, when
the figure was 68,468, the report said. The male prison population has
grown 29 percent over that time, from 1,057,406.

Year by year, the number of women incarcerated grew an average of 5
percent, compared to an average annual increase of 3.3 percent for
men.

"It coincides exactly with the inception of the war on drugs," in the
1980s and continuing into the 1990s, Mauer said. "It represents a sort
of vicious cycle of women engaged in drug abuse and often connected
with financial or psychological dependence with a boyfriend," or other
man involved in drug crime, Mauer said.

The prison figures do not fully reflect the number of people behind
bars. About 80,000 women were in local jails last year, along with
more than 600,000 men.

The federal prison system held a large share of female prisoners, with
a population of 11,635 at the close of 2003. One state -- Texas --
held even more, with a population of 13,487. California, the nation's
largest prison system, held 10,656 women. North Carolina prisons held
33,560 women in 2003, a 2.2 percent increase over 2002, the Bureau of
Justice Statistics reported.