Women in Prison – Survey of State Prison Inmates

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics from the 1886 to 1991 the amount of women in prison has grown by 75%. Most of these women were over 30 years old, with at least a high school degree or the equivalent, and part of a social minority group. Many of the inmates grew up in homes with lack a one of their parents or even both parents, and a large amount of them have recorded experiencing physical or sexual abuse. Most of the women have been incarcerated for nonviolent offenses, typically drug crimes. Women in prison for violent crimes were about twice as likely as male inmates to have committed their crimes against someone who was close related to them. Women inmates are unique to male inmates in that they are incarcerated for different types of crimes and they therefore require different levels of treatment while in prison. If these statistics are more carefully tended to, a more appropriate form of incarceration could be provided to aid the mass incarceration problem in the United States.