Washington: Female Prison
Female prison population grows twice as fast as male, report says
By REBECCA CARROLL
Associated Press
10/24/2005
WASHINGTON - Women made up 7 percent of all inmates in state and federal prisons last year and accounted for nearly one in four arrests, the government reported Sunday.
Paige Harrison, a co-author of a Bureau of Justice Statistics report, linked an upswing in the rate of arrest for women to their increased participation in drug crimes, violent crimes and fraud.
The number of women incarcerated in state and federal prisons in 2004 was up 4 percent compared to 2003, more than double the 1.8 percent increase among men, the study said. In 1995, women made up 6.1 percent of all inmates in those facilities.
"The number of incarcerated women has been growing at a rate nearly double that of men, due in large part to sentencing policies in the war in drugs," the Sentencing Project, a group promoting alternatives to prison, said in a statement.
The group said the number of drug offenders in prisons and jails has risen from 40,000 in 1980 to more than 450,000 today. According to FBI figures, law officers in 2004 made more arrests for drug violations than for any other offense - about 1.7 million arrests, or 12.5 percent of all arrests.
Those sentenced for drug offenses made up 55 percent of federal inmates in 2003, the report said.
About 8.4 percent of the country's black males between ages 25 and 29 were in state or federal prison, compared with 2.5 percent of Hispanic males and 1.2 percent of white males in the same age group, the report said.
Blacks made up an estimated 41 percent of inmates with a sentence of more than one year, the report said.
The total number of people incarcerated grew 1.9 percent in 2004 to 2,267,787 people. The country's state and federal prison population - 1,421,911 - grew 2.6 percent in 2004, compared to an average growth of 3.4 percent a year since 1995.
In New York State, the number of prisoners under state or federal jurisdiction dropped by 2.2 percent, falling from 65,198 in 2003 to 63,751 in 2004.
Harrison attributed some of the prison population rise to tougher sentencing policies implemented in the late 1990s. She said the average time served by prisoners today is seven months longer than it was in 1995.
The Sentencing Project said the continued rise in prisoners despite falling crime rates raises questions about the country's imprisonment system. The group said the incarceration rate - 724 per 100,000 - is 25 percent higher than that of any other nation.
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