BOSTON, Mass. — On Monday, the Prison Policy Initiative published an article detailing rising prison populations, the disproportionate growth of women’s incarceration rates, racial disparities behind bars and the vast number of people affected by the punishment system.
Leah Wang wrote on the Prison Policy Initiative website about mass incarceration rates in the United States. Charts showed that incarceration rates had declined in recent years but have recently begun rising again. Wang attributed this to the pandemic, stating that it “temporarily stalled admissions and accelerated releases.”
Now that prison and jail populations have rebounded from the pandemic, there is a “serious need for policies that will permanently reduce prison populations.”
As incarceration rates increase, there has been a notable difference in the growth of women’s incarceration rates compared with those of men. Data showed that “women’s prison populations have grown at a faster clip compared to men’s.”
Women’s incarceration mostly “takes place in local jails … and where most women have not even been convicted of a crime.” Local jails, where most women are incarcerated, “offer fewer services than prisons and struggle to provide proper health care.”
According to Kristen Budd, Dinesh Napal and Joshua Rovner of the Sentencing Project, this is a “result of more expansive law enforcement efforts, stiffer drug sentencing laws, and post-conviction barriers to reentry that uniquely affect women.”
Additionally, the Vera Institute points out that “women often become involved with the justice system as a result of efforts to cope with life challenges.” This includes poverty, unemployment and health struggles. Therefore, they are jailed for “low-level, nonviolent offenses.”
Vera also notes that once they are incarcerated, “women must grapple with systems primarily designed for men” and “may leave jail with diminished prospects for physical and behavioral health recovery, as well as greater parental stress and financial instability.”
Fortunately, the Prison Policy Initiative states, “advocates and lawmakers are paying increasing attention to the unique harms and burdens for women impacted by the criminal legal system.”
Other disparities in incarceration rates stem from the disproportionate rates of Black and Native people compared with other racial and ethnic groups. Evidence shows that 929 per 100,000 Black U.S. residents were incarcerated in 2023. In comparison, the total prison incarceration rate was 360 per 100,000 U.S. residents. These disparities “begin at the earlier stages of the legal system, like policing, pretrial detention, and opportunities for diversion.”
An example of this comes from an article by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which states that “a Black person is five times more likely to be stopped without just cause than a white person.”
Additionally, Wang notes that people fail to recognize the vast number of people affected by the punishment system. While there are “2 million people behind bars,” there are still “millions more people … under the thumb of the correctional system, on probation or parole.”
Data from 2023 show that “there are about 3 million people on probation and 536,000 people on parole who live under these poorly-designed ‘alternatives’ to incarceration.”
Even those on probation have a greater chance of ending up back in prison or jail due to breaking minor probation rules such as “missing meetings or breaking curfew,” rather than committing new crimes, according to an article from the Vera Institute. It found that “23 percent of state prison admissions resulted from technical violations while on probation or parole.”
Wang states that those who are part of the “mass punishment” system are in “poorer overall health.” Those who are “behind bars or under community supervision” have reported “much higher rates of serious psychological distress.”
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