Candidate Clinton promises to “institute gender-responsive policies in the federal prison system and encourage states to do the same”
Mass incarceration has torn families apart, impoverished communities, and kept too many Americans from living up to their God-given potential. But mass incarceration’s impact on women and their families has been particularly acute — and it doesn’t get the attention it deserves….
The United States’ prison and jail population includes 215,000 women — nearly one-third of all female prisoners worldwide, and 800% more women than were in prison four decades ago. African-American women are more than twice as likely to be in prison than white women.
But women aren’t the only ones affected when they are sent to prison. The high number of women in prison — and the long lengths of their sentences — destabilizes families and communities, especially their children. Since 1991, the number of children with a mother in prison has more than doubled. Mothers in prison are five times more likely than fathers in prison to have to put their children in foster care while they serve their sentences.
We can’t go on like this. It is time we reform our broken criminal justice system. First, we need to reform policing practices, end racial profiling, and eradicate racial disparities in sentencing. Second, we need to promote alternatives to incarceration, particularly for nonviolent and first-time offenders, so families aren’t broken up. We need to improve access to high-quality treatment for substance abuse, inside and outside the prison system, because drug and alcohol addiction is a disease, not a crime — and we need to treat it as such.
And third, we need to be deliberate about understanding the different paths that can land women in prison, be more attentive to women’s unique needs while they are incarcerated, and do more to support women and their families once they are released. I will institute gender-responsive policies in the federal prison system and encourage states to do the same — because women follow different paths to crime than men, and face different risks and challenges both inside and outside the prison walls, and every part of the justice system, from sentencing to the conditions of confinement to re-entry services, should reflect women’s unique needs.
Research shows that women’s relationships … are often a significant risk factor for becoming involved with the justice system. Most women in prison are there because of nonviolent drug or property crimes. Over 60% of them report drug dependence or abuse in the year before they went to prison. Many of them grew up in abusive households … and they are more likely than men in prison to have experienced sexual abuse or trauma in their life before prison.
And too often, a woman and her children continue to live with the consequences even after she has served her time and paid her debt to society. Because formerly incarcerated people face limited job opportunities, an entire family is effectively punished by a woman’s time in prison. “Banning the box” — preventing an employer from asking about criminal history at the initial application stage, so that individuals have a chance to compete for jobs on a fair basis — is a necessary and important step, but it isn’t enough. In addition to job training and interview coaching, women returning to their communities after years behind bars need safe housing for themselves and their children, continuity of health care, and above all a supportive community….
Women and the families they support are being crushed by a criminal justice system that costs far too much — in state and federal budgets, and in lives derailed and economic opportunity lost — without making us safer. Too often, people are prejudiced against the formerly incarcerated — in employment, in housing, in everyday interactions. We say we are a nation of second chances — and it’s time that we act like it.
I am, generally speaking, quite supportive of “gender-responsive policies” in our criminal justice systems, particularly because there are lots of evidence-based reasons for viewing (and sentencing) most female offenders as much lesser threats to public safety than most male offenders. That said, I am not entirely sure what specific sentencing laws and prison policies need to be changed dramatically in federal and state systems in order to make them more “gender-responsive.” Should (and legally could) a Prez Clinton institute an executive order providing that federal resources earmarked for prison treatment and post-prison reentry programs must be used first for all female federal offenders before any male offenders have access to these programs?