Washington D.C., Jul 21, 2017 / 03:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- While there is talk of criminal justice reform in the U.S., something must also be done about a decades-long spike in female inmates, experts and members of Congress of both parties said.
“We talk a lot about racial disparities in our system, but for some odd reason, we’ve really not focused on women, and it’s been to the detriment of public safety,” Holly Harris, executive director of the Justice Action Network, told CNA.
Harris spoke at the event “Women Unshackled,” sponsored by both the Justice Action Network and the Brennan Center for Justice, and was held at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. on July 18.
It featured a keynote address by Gov. Mary Fallin of Oklahoma (R) and speeches by members of Congress of both parties, Rep. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Rep. Sheila Jackson lee (D-Tex.), Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) and Rep. Mia Love (R-Utah).
“If we as a country value life as much as we say we do, then we value all life, even those who have made mistakes and have went through the incarceration system,” Rep. Collins said in the morning welcome remarks.
“How can we justify a system that takes people who are survivors of trauma, survivors of abuse, and put them on a survivor of sexual trauma to prison pipeline?” asked Sen. Booker, who had said in his address that many women in prison have previously suffered trauma, which may be triggered or exacerbated during their stay in prison.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops had addressed the rising numbers of women in prison in their 2000 statement on criminal justice reform “Responsibility, Rehabilitation, and Restoration.”
The bishops said that the large increase in the number of women in prison came “largely as a result of tougher drug laws,” that most of the women were incarcerated for non-violent offenses, and that “an equal number have left children behind, often in foster care, as they enter prison.”
According to the Vera Institute of Justice, the numbers of women behind bars have grown more with each decade, especially when the U.S. is compared to other countries on the issue.
The research is “incredibly dated and scarce,” Elizabeth Swavola of the Vera Institute said at the “Women Unshackled” event on Tuesday, but from what information the organization has been able to study, the numbers are striking.
While fewer than 8,000 women were incarcerated in the U.S. in 1970, 110,000 were incarcerated in 2014, the Vera Institute reported, with the sharpest increases coming in small or “midsize” counties. In the U.S.,127 women per 100,000 people are incarcerated. In Canada that rate is just 11 per 100,000.
They make up the “fastest growing segment of the prison population” Harris said. Most of them are mothers, and many, like the men in prison, suffer from drug issues, poverty, and mental illness, and racial minorities make up higher rates of the prison population than in society.
Many women, however, have suffered previous instances of trauma – which can be exacerbated or triggered in prison. Vera reported that “almost a third had experienced post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the past 12 months,” and that 86 percent of women in prison have “experienced sexual violence in their lifetime,” along with 77 percent suffering from partner violence.
Eighty percent are also mothers, with some being the primary caretaker for their children, Vera reported. “In many instances,” Cynthia Berry of the Council for Court Excellence said, “children aren’t even told their mother is incarcerated.”
If their mother is their primary caretaker, children may end up in the foster care system as a result, and mothers may not eventually be reunited with their children after they are released from prison.
Most are in prison for low-level or non-violent offenses. “According to the latest available national data, which are now more than a decade old,” Vera reported, “32 percent of women in jail are there for property offenses, 29 percent for drug offenses, and nearly 21 percent for public order offenses.”
For the violent offenders, some are serving sentences for violence committed against people who were violent with them, like women retaliating against abusive husbands or boyfriends.
Why has there been such a sharp increase in the number of women behind bars?
There is “very little out there explaining why,” Swavola said, but from Vera’s findings, “at the very front end, policing practices have come to increasingly focus on low-level, non-violent offenses” like low-level drug possession and disorderly conduct. This would be the result of “broken window” type policing, based on the belief that if smaller infractions are punished, there will be fewer greater infractions.
Because of a “punitive” approach to drug enforcement, she said, there are more women in the prison system.
Yet once they land in prison, they face a system that is hard enough for men to cope with, but one that at least is designed for men. For the women, they face greater threats of abuse and a more severe lack of privacy.
“Women are different from men,” Harris told CNA/EWTN News. “Their needs would be different. So unfortunately right now, women are entering prisons that are programmed for men.”
The result is that, although time in prison may help men become more hardened criminals, women may exit feeling far more degraded and dejected.
“All of these women have completely physically changed,” Harris said. They are visibly lacking self-confidence and staring at the floor. “It’s just clear that they are emotionally and mentally devastated.”
They are more likely to be victimized in prison. For instance, while women accounted for only 13 percent of the local jail population between 2009 and 2011, 67 percent of victims of staff-on-inmate sexual victimization were women, as well as 27 percent of inmate-on-inmate sexual victimization, Vera reported.
They may have to endure indignities like male prison officers walking in to their room while they are undressed, Sen. Booker said. Practices common in prison like shackling and searching inmates “can really re-trigger a lot of that trauma,” Swavola said.
Also, women prisoners tend to be poorer, which means that they may have less of a chance of having their bail paid or may not be able to afford expenses in prison like basic health necessities, laundry expenses, or phone calls home.
“Some jails charge inmates a per diem fee during their incarceration,” Vera reported, “which can leave an individual with thousands of dollars of criminal justice debt upon release.”
Prison can be “incredibly destabilizing and disruptive” to a woman’s life, Swavola said, especially in the case of a severely mentally ill woman.
Cash bail and “excessive fines and fees” can “trap women in the system,” she said.
What solutions can be attempted for the problem of women in prisons? States and counties could begin to invest more in drug treatment and prevention programs rather than law enforcement, Swavola said.
“A huge portion of these county and community budgets go toward public safety,” she said, and “oftentimes it’s 70 to 80 percent.” Much of that portion “is to corrections,” she said.
Other programs like diversion programs do not get resources, she said. “I think we really need to rethink how we are using our taxpayer dollars to fund the justice system.”
Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin (R) said that her state has put too many women behind bars and is working on decreasing the number of incarcerated.
“For many of our non-violent, low-level offenders, there are alternatives that work better,” she said, like “drug and mental health courts” and “community based treatment, diversion programs, supervision.”
Recidivism is also a large cause of women in prisons, Vera reported.
“It’s no wonder that the female prison population is spiking, because we’re not providing these women with the tools that they’ll need to successfully re-enter society,” Harris said.
“They are not equipped mentally, emotionally, they can’t find jobs, they can’t improve their education, they can’t reconnect with their families, they can’t get adequate housing.”
For instance, CNA spoke with an ex-convict, Casey Irwin, back in April who had been convicted of bank fraud and drug-related offenses.
“I can get a job, but it wasn’t going to pay me any money, and I wasn’t going to ever move up,” Irwin told CNA of her difficulty in finding a job after prison that paid her enough in wages.
Eventually, she was offered a managerial position at a fast food franchise, but said that more opportunities must be available to ex-convicts, who face a myriad of obstacles from employment to obtaining loans.
[…]
I’m sick of polls regardless of who’s conducting them..
Agree re the polls.
But when the Holy Eucharist is “handed out” so casually with little or no reverence by unnecessary lay ministers you have but one ingredient to the decline in this foundational belief.
I do grow weary of it all.
You sound very dejected yourself … do you not want to know how affected your work is as a Deacon? … no wonder Catholic are loosing faith when you seem to be losing your!
David Brown: I’ll let you know when your services as a psychologist or spiritual advisor are needed. Give me your contact information so that, if and when the need arises, I’ll know where to reach you. You’re obviously highly skilled since by reading one sentence written by someone you’re able to devine so much about him. Remarkable!
I’m sick of reading about polls, and most especially polls about Catholics. Tell me one instance when a published poll had any effect on this degenerate culture other than to amuse for approximately 30 seconds. Tell me, instead, about the individual hearts and minds that have been converted through God’s grace and the evangelization efforts of Catholics..
After some pondering, I think I agree with you. I recalled how our Bishop (a good sincerely believing Bishop) cracked in his Christmas homily the fact that, according to the recent survey, more than half of Australian Catholics do not believe in the Real Presence. Somehow, he made it a point of his homily. It was one of my early years of worshiping with Catholics and I was stunned and became depressed. I could not understand why so many Catholics do not believe but even more than that – if they don’t why do they come to the Church? In a word, it was all I could think about on that night in the Cathedral.
And truly, why should I know those statistics? They achieve nothing. Our task is to live that Real Presence, nothing else. Whether others believe in it is between them and God. I think those surveys have something vulgar about them.
A quibble, but not really:
It’s amusing when people say “the Church.” That is a very sloppy and imprecise way of looking at things. Who, exactly, is “the Church”? Is it Pope Francis? Should we accept his teachings on global warming? Is it the people who put together the last catechism, with their teachings on nuclear war somehow being more evil than war with arrows and swords? Is it St. Augustine? Is it the people who wrote the Catechism of Trent? Is it the moderns who honor/worship Mary?
I think all intelligent Catholics need to get out of the habit of saying “the Church” and should, instead, be very specific on who in the Church is teaching what. It would be very enlightening.
BTW, if the writer of this article is the same Matthew Bunson who used to do the Catholic Almanac, then I say “thank you, thank you, thank you for all your work on those books!” I used many of them!
With such a watered down faith and the mindset of many which is, “Come let us worship each other”, or like the famous burger joint’s motto is “Have it your way”, which I call the Burger “K” Gospel, is anyone really surprised?
Another Catholic article focusing purely on externals and peripherals and calling it “spiritual”.
How about, “How many Catholics have sought God?”, “How many have loved God?”, “How many have found God?”, and “How many clergy have taught you how to find God?”.
The answers would show a generally dead spirituality from top to bottom, and explain quite handily the collapse.
This external-only observance was what the Christ spoke so stridently against, and that is pretty much all we have today, People Of The Book who have lost sight of to what the rules are supposed to lead.
Gloom and doom, an unhappy forecast by Real Clear’s poll the numbers reflecting in comparative accuracy Pew and other polls. Despite the slivers of resurgence by the Eucharist Congress and other attempts at revival of the faith they’re small in comparison.
Perhaps Catholics who are beginning to return to Mass and confession read the signs of the times. Many of us do sense this although others point to previous crises that eventually ended, doomsday syndromes that occur periodically in which people were convinced the Second Coming is at hand. Of course that would be a happy turn of events, except perhaps not for some who may have a desire for highly spectacular entertainment.
From observation as a priest it’s likely that the disaffection is centered on belief in the real Prince in the Eucharist. Several decades of distorted liturgy at the altar priests suddenly transformed into showmen, entertainers, and the more subdued flight attendant. Solemnity vanished along with the fire except for the resurgence of the TLM and those of us who offer the Novus Ordo Mass with reverence and love. They’re other factors: the explosion of sensuality in conjunction with the pill poor and frequently heretical catechesis and so forth and so on. Although it all comes back to that real belief in the real presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist.
It’s been argued then that we suffered and survived similar. Here is where there’s strong disagreement from some including myself. We’ve never had heresy flow down to the faithful from the apex of hierarchy. Example the Arian heresy began with a priest and assumed by hierarchy. All the major heresies I’m aware of were singular issues, theological misinterpretations. The other marked difference is that the current heresy seriously affects all Apostolic doctrine, the fundamental premise that intrinsic moral principles are not permanent, in effect that truth and permanence are not congruent, that human behavior need not be moderated in accordance with Christ’s.
What we may infer from this heresy is that if there are no permanent truths, the fallacy is revealed in declaring that itself to be a truth. In other words, the premise cancels itself. For the vast majority we’re basically talking over their heads when we argue this point. What the Catholic public perceives is a Church in which all is questioned now permanently by a process called Synodality. And a clergy bishops included who are basically, except for the rare few who are quickly suppressed, rendered catatonic. Anyone in the house with smelling salts?
Amen Father. Heretical Modernist have destroyed so much beauty and worse of all led so many souls to Hell.
The young will save the church from those that say in the pews and said nothing in the early 70s.
Yes. There’s reason why hope is a theological virtue, as evident in times like these when there seems no hope.
The Novos Ordo can sometimes be celebrated with dignity. TLM can never be offered with indignity. Which is most pleasing to God?
As much as I would like to believe these results, there is absolutely no way the results are close to accurate – unless the people polled are CWR readers or were leaving Mass on a Sunday morning. CARA has been doing polling since 1964. From their 2023 poll: “Prior to the pandemic 23% reported attending weekly. By comparison 21% said they were attending this frequently now. There are also slightly fewer saying they attend almost every week (10% now compared to 13% prior to the pandemic).” https://nineteensixty-four.blogspot.com/2023/ As for the “12% that attend daily” I think they need to move the decimal point one place to the left.
I do not believe that this poll agrees with the CARA polls (Center for Applied research on the Apostolate. It makes a difference whether the poll was in person, phone, or questionnaire. People tend to exaggerate their performance. when talking to a live person. Was Mass attendance done on a survey or by head count? Different methodologies produce different results.
Crusader – full agreement. If these numbers were even close to the facts, then we should see traffic congestion on Sunday mornings.
Harris’s support for a constitutional amendment that would legalize abortion without any restrictions, including allowing an infant surviving an abortion to die, is barbaric. This woman also supports gay marriage and the mutilation of children through transgenderism. Thus, she openly opposes basic moral principles thar are foundational to Catholic teaching. This woman is an arm of Satan. These policies along with her economic and immigration policies will destroy this country
The US has a problem of passing ANYTHING as law so long as it got duly voted. Is that in the US Constitution? It is asserting that “we the people” clause is MEANT to give such a reading to the whole document but without actually saying so.
In typical law-making down through the ages except the 20th Century, abortion is crime as it always is and should be; PLUS, merely SPEAKING about certain things so as to promote them, is subversion, i.e., is treated as subversion as it always was and should be. The idea that law is found ONLY through a vote is unjustifiable.
Please do not use the term “gay” to mean homosexual.
As the Stonewall Institute has told us, homosexuals prefer not to be called homosexual, and to use the term “gay” is to be an ally of the LGBS community.
I disagree, as a priest, I see first hand the state of things, we in the US have about 12% of Catholics coming to Mass every Sunday. If you count REGISTERED CATHOLICS, who are registered in a parish, that number goes up, but when you consider a huge number of Catholics who never register in a parish, that number goes down.
.
I would be interested to know the reason why Catholics go to Mass (when they go), if they don’t believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist? I would also challenge the accuracy of that 52% belief number in light of the low weekly Mass attendance. If people really believed in the Real Presence, they would go to Mass at least weekly. How is it they see the importance of Christ in the Eucharist, but fail to see the importance of going to meet Him?? And what, to them, is more important?? This is a problem within the Church, when people become accustomed and conditioned to thinking that going to Mass is just something we do and there’s no reflection on how this might affect my life spiritually. Not to mention how the dismal confession numbers indicate that the vast majority of people presenting themselves for communion are not properly disposed to receive it.
I applaud the comments of Fathers Dan and Peter Morello. I hope more and more priests will adopt their manner of thinking.
Jesus Christ must be treated with all dignity, respect, reverence and solemnity. Unfortunately, since Vatican II and the Novus Ordo Mass many of the above characteristics were taken out of the Mass and the structure of Churches. The altar became a supper table and Communion became a communal meal. Many priests and lay people adopted a casual, nonchalant attitude toward the Eucharist which diminishes the importance of the Eucharist. The concept that The Holy Mass is a sacrifice was forgotten. I’ve talked to some priests that actually said that the Eucharist distracts from the Mass. The congregation was there to worship God in one another.
Protestant concepts were introduced into the NO Mass which helped to undermine the belief that the Eucharist is God. Churches lost their beauty and became very ordinary. The tabernacle was move from an elevated position in the front of the church to a “Eucharistic Chapel” which essentially was a walk-in closet. No wonder people lost the belief of the Real Presence.
Fortunately, the TLM and conservative NO Masses are being said more often and with growing attendance. God will eventually give us back our churches and our true Mass.
One more item: A number of people dress very casually for Mass. One should at least wear dress clothes to Mass and not t-shirts and shorts. Imagine, if a lawyer showed up in a courtroom to litigate a case, dressed in a t-shirt and shorts. What do you think the judge would do to that lawyer? Doesn’t Jesus Christ deserve even more respect than a civil judge?