Document 45: "Plank 18: Offenders," from National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year, The Spirit of Houston: The First National Women's Conference (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1978), pp. 76-77.
p. 76
PLANK 18
OFFENDERS
States should review and reform their sentencing laws and their practices to eliminate discrimination that affects the treatment of women in penal facilities. Particular attention should be paid to the needs of poor and minority women.
States should reform their practices, where needed, to provide legal counseling and referral services, improved health services emphasizing dignity in treatment for women in institutions, and protection of women prisoners from sexual abuse by male and female inmates and correctional personnel.
Corrections boards must provide improved educational and vocational training in a nonstereotyped range of skills that pay enough for an ex-offender to support her family.
Law enforcement agencies, courts, and correctional programs must give special attention to the needs of children with mothers under arrest, on trial, or in prison.
States must increase efforts to divert women offenders to community-based treatment facilities such as residential and nonresidential halfway houses, work release centers, or group homes as close to the offender's family as possible.
Disparities in the treatment of male and female juvenile offenders must be eliminated; status offenses must be removed from jurisdiction of juvenile courts; and States are urged to establish more youth bureaus, crisis centers, and diversion agencies and receive female juveniles detained for promiscuous conduct, for running away, or because of family or school programs.
Background:
"Only one out of 10 violent crimes is committed by a woman."
Women make up a relatively small proportion of the prison population, and until recently little data had been collected or any effort made to understand their special problems. Studies have shown that they are treated differently and frequently fare worse than men in statutes, in courts, and in correctional institutions.
Who they are According to the U.S. Justice Department's Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, most incarcerated women are under 30, and 50 percent are black. Most are mothers, though only 10 percent had been living with husbands before they went to prison. The majority are less educated than women as a group, and most of them want to work when they are released.
Uniform Crime Reports of the FBI indicate that most women are arrested for crimes against property such as larceny, forgery, embezzlement, and fraud. Only one out of 10 violent crimes is committed by a woman.
Discrimination in sentencing Some states have laws that permit indeterminate sentences for women, and this leads to longer sentences for women than for men convicted of the same crime. The traditional theory has been that women are more responsive to rehabilitation and therefore should be incarcerated for longer periods. Since 1970, some State laws allowing longer sentences for women have been found in violation of the 14th amendment and the equal protection clause.
Institutions for women After sentencing, a woman will probably be sent farther from home than a male offender. Because of the relatively small number of female offenders (5,600 women out of 196,000 inmates in State and Federal prisons in December 1970), there are few institutions for them (four Federal institutions for women, 23 for men; 40 State prisons for women and 250 for men). With smaller and fewer facilities, there is less opportunity to provide specialized quarters. The result is that hard core repeaters, juveniles, and first offenders are sometimes placed together.
Women's prisons are less likely to have full-time medical staffs or adequate hospital facilities. General support services—counseling, library, religious, and recreational—may not exist at all. In those institutions in which men and women are housed in separate sections, women often do not have access to the programs and services that are available to men.
Job training Women in prison have fewer opportunities for rehabilitation and vocational training than do men. In a 1976 study of some 6,200 women offenders by the Female Offender Resource Center of Washington, D.C., 84 percent said that their greatest problem was a lack of job skills. Lack of education was the second most important problem.
There are an average of 10 vocational training programs in men's prisons opposed to an average of less than three programs in women's institutions, a Yale Law Review survey found in 1973. The men's programs are usually in financially rewarding fields such as plumbing and electronics, while women's prisons offer training in only low paid skills such as housekeeping, cosmetology, nursing aid, and clerical work.
Mothers and children Between 70 and 80 percent of
the women in prison are mothers, and approximately half of these are the sole
support of their children. There are very few programs geared to their special
needs. They may face such problems as loss of contact with their children
p. 77
Alternatives to prison Half-way houses and other programs in which a woman can be rehabilitated close to home have been tried successfully in some cases. In Pennsylvania, community-based programs have been organized to provide women offenders with housing, legal counsel, child care, employment, job training, education, and individual counseling. Several programs in California have demonstrated that correction within the community is more effective in reducing the number returning to crime then severe forms of punishment.
Work-release (under which a sentenced prisoner is confined only at night or on weekends and is permitted to work) is not used as extensively for female offenders as for men. In a 1974 Southern California Law Review study, women in California prisons were found to be excluded from work-release programs for "economic reasons." The rationale offered by prison officials is that since there are fewer women offenders than men, it is not economical to spend limited program funds on them; women don't need jobs to support themselves or dependents; it is more expensive to provide separate housing for women.
Juveniles At every point in the juvenile justice system young women are treated differently and usually more harshly than young men. There appears to be a greater willingness to institutionalize girls for far less serious offenses than those for which boys are committed. More young girls are in custody for what are called status offenses—acts not considered criminal if committed by an adult—such as promiscuity, running away, truancy, unruly behavior. According to a study by the National Assessment of Juvenile Corrections Project, 75 percent of the girls in juvenile correctional facilities were status offenders, as compared with 25 percent of boys in juvenile correctional facilities. The rest were declared delinquent (behavior considered criminal if committed by an adult). Because of the vagueness of the wording of many status offender laws, girls are too frequently locked up "for their own safety and well-being" or to protect their "morals."
Once institutionalized, girls have less recreation, less vocational training, and less quality care in counseling than boys, and like their older sister, they remain in custody longer.
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