As US locks up fewer men, more women wind up behind bars

UNION TOWNSHIP, N.J. — Freedom Road stretches across less than two miles of the rural New Jersey landscape, from a Walmart shopping center on one end to an aging, notorious state-owned complex on the other: the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women.

Plagued by violence and sexual assault against incarcerated women, this state prison, a relic of the early 1900s, will soon close.

But New Jersey will find a new home for Mahan’s occupants. The state expects to break ground this year on a new, 420-bed women’s prison. The price tag: $320 million.

The need for the new prison highlights a confounding trend in criminal justice in the United States: While the overall incarceration rate has slowly declined in recent years, the number of women in prisons and jails has exploded in the United States, peaking in 2015.

Since 1980, the number of incarcerated women has increased sevenfold.

Experts cite many reasons: the lingering effects of America’s so-called War on Drugs, which has disproportionately sent women to prison; harsher punishments for the nonviolent crimes more often committed by women; and a high rate of recidivism.

States are responding by building more prisons. At least five states besides New Jersey are constructing or planning new women’s facilities: Louisiana, Montana, Nevada, South Dakota and Vermont. Montana and South Dakota already rank second and third among all states in the percentage of their female residents behind bars.

“There are a number of states building new women’s prisons,” Wanda Bertram of Prison Policy Initiative, a nonpartisan research group, told Straight Arrow News. “New Jersey is not alone.” 

Why women are locked up

The United States has more jails and prisons than colleges and universities. While some states, such as  New Jersey, have decreased their incarceration rates through various reform efforts, as a nation, no country incarcerates a greater percentage of its girls and women than the U.S. 

“Incarceration is ineffective and expensive, and it was also not designed to address women’s unique needs and experiences,” Kristen Budd, senior research analyst at the Sentencing Project, told SAN. “Many incarcerated women are also mothers. Instead of providing social support to help women and their families flourish, this country relies on a system of punishment that upends family stability and contributes to trauma with little to show in return.” 

Women account for roughly 10% of the incarcerated population in the U.S., a relatively small number that can lead them to be overlooked.

“This means that patterns unique to women’s incarceration are easily obscured when we focus exclusively on the larger, overall incarcerated population,” Tiana Herring wrote for the Prison Policy Initiative. “And when we overlook incarcerated women as a unique group, we also fail to address the additional challenges they face — including different health care needs and a greater likelihood of being a primary caretaker of young children — that make their growing numbers all the more alarming.” 

Many incarcerated women struggle with mental illnesses and drug addiction, even more than incarcerated men. According to the Council on Criminal Justice, 70% of incarcerated women meet the criteria for a diagnosis of substance abuse disorder, compared to 60% of men.

About one quarter of women are locked up for lower-level drug offenses, while 32% are jailed for property crimes, which are often linked to drug use. 

These numbers began rising in the 1980s and 1990s as lawmakers imposed mandatory minimums and other “tough on crime” policies that sharply increased arrests and prison time for women.

“Women in particular suffered the ramifications of tough sentencing laws during the ‘War on Drugs’ era where we see harsher sentencing for crimes classified as nonviolent,” Budd said. “These changes sent more people to prison and kept them there much longer. … The dramatic growth of life sentences has also affected women, with one in every 11 women in prison serving a life sentence.”

That’s true even though women are less likely than men to commit violent crimes. Rather, they are most often arrested for nonviolent, lower-level offenses.

“When states and counties push on Broken Windows policing, criminalizing homelessness, the War on Drugs, and enforcing quality of life offenses — such as doing drugs in public, or being in crisis on the street — it has a relatively greater effect on women,” Bertram said. “Women are more likely to be doing those things than they are violent offenses…. A policing system going hard on nonviolent, less serious offenses, that’s when you’re going to see more arrests of women.” 

Lack of programming and support 

Mary is an attorney who was incarcerated in New Jersey after receiving three DUIs. She struggled with an addiction to alcohol and joined Alcoholics Anonymous. But once she was locked up and doing her time, she discovered there were no programs for women in her jail. 

“They give you an AA book if you ask for it, but there was no program,” Mary, who asked that she be identified by only her first name, told SAN. “A lot of people don’t know they belong in a program. Jail is a perfect time to introduce something like this to people, because they don’t have anything else going on. Not just AA, any time of self-betterment programs. All the men could earn their GEDs, but there was no education available for women.” 

“There’s no — absolutely no — programming,” Mary continued. “Where I was was a male jail. They literally just carved out an area for women. We didn’t have access to the gym, mass, absolutely no programming, and no law library. A guy convicted of killing his whole family, he could go to the law library every day. I was never allowed to go to the law library.” 

Certain jails around the U.S. have adopted stronger programs for incarcerated people. In Hot Springs, Arkansas, for instance, the Garland County Detention Center offers myriad programs for incarcerated women — but many of the women still are arrested again once released. They said there is thin support or little transitional services or housing in Hot Springs, once they’re released. 

Such support is especially important for women, advocates say.

“Women in our criminal legal system, compared to the general population and incarcerated men, are also more likely to have trauma and abuse histories, which have the potential for putting them at greater risk for criminal legal involvement,” the Sentencing Project’s Budd said. 

Alternatives to incarceration 

America’s high recidivism rate — 63% of women return to jail or prison after being freed —  reflects something deeper about the justice system: It doesn’t help people not return.

“If the whole point of prison or jail is just punishment, then they’ve accomplished that, because they have a holding place for women,” Mary said. “But if it’s on cutting down recidivism, or reformation, or any chance of showing there’s a different way, that’s not happening. As long as they get you through the jail without being raped, you get the sense that jail management feels they did their job.” 

Advocates promote alternatives to lock-up, methods that can change the behavior, rather than just punish for it. 

“Mental illness and drug addiction: those conditions don’t tend to get better behind bars,” Bertram said. “Big picture: making healthcare truly universal would go a very long way in reducing incarceration rates, especially among women.”

Bertram suggested diversion programs, such as drug courts, mental health courts, and probation, and intervention before someone is even arrested.

“Every step along the way into incarceration,” she said, “there is a point to get out.”

However, some believe investing in new, smaller, and “more humane” prisons and jails is a step in the right direction. 

In New Jersey, the Edna Mahan facility holds as many as 900 women. The new prison will have 420 beds.  

“Moving people between facilities and closing them down will not automatically fix the systemic problems our state’s prison system has,” said Christian Fuscarino, executive director of Garden State Equality, which advocates for New Jersey’s LGBTQ+ residents. “But it is a step forward.”

Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief