Incarceration of women in the United States

This article discusses the incarceration of women in prisons within the United States. A 2014 International Center for Prison Studies report stated that about 33% of all female prisoners in the world are held in the United States.

According to a September 2014 study by the International Center for Prison Studies, nearly a third of all female prisoners worldwide are incarcerated in the United States. The total population of females incarcerated in US prisons and jails in 2013 was 213,700 (males 2,492,400) – 9.3% of the total. Between 2000 and 2010 the number of males in prison grew by 1.4% per annum, while the number of females grew by 1.9% per annum. From 2010 to 2013 the numbers fell for both genders, -0.8% for males and -0.5 for females. For jails the figures for 2000–10 are 1.8% for males and 2.6% for females, while for 2010–13 they are -1.4% for males and 3.4% for females. Over this period the female proportion of the incarcerated population has been increasing, at least partly due to compulsory sentencing.

Hispanic women are incarcerated nearly twice the rate of white women, and black women are incarcerated at four times the rate of white women. Within the US, the rate of female incarceration increased five fold in a two decade span ending in 2001; the increase occurred because of increased prosecutions and convictions of offenses related to recreational drugs, increases in the severity of offenses, and a lack of community sanctions and treatment for women who violate drug laws. Tough-on-crime legislation and legislation associated with the war on drugs have been connected to the increasing rate of the incarceration of women of color from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. This rapid boom of female prisoners is something the primarily male-dominated prison system was not structurally prepared for and, as a result, female prisons often lack the resources to accommodate the specific social, mental, healthcare needs of these women.

In the United States, authorities began housing women in correctional facilities separate from men in the 1870s. The first American female correctional facility with dedicated buildings and staff was the Mount Pleasant Female Prison in Ossining, New York; the facility had some operational dependence on nearby Sing Sing, a men's prison.

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