The exploding US female prison population
Black women are three times more likely than white women to be sent to prison in the USA
9th November 2015
Here you can find over 750 posts tracking every major development in our prisons since 2011. You can read prison safety statistics, find out about prison reform plans and (often lack of progress), positive developments and abject failures. If you’re looking for something in particular, try the search box below.
Black women are three times more likely than white women to be sent to prison in the USA
This litany of figures hides of course the distress and tragedy behind all these individual incidents for both prisoners and staff. For just as self-harm incidents have increased by over one fifth, serious assaults on staff are up by over two fifths.
History teaches us that testing and security, although important components of an overall strategy, are unlikely to have a significant impact on levels of drug use in prison.
It is provisionally estimated that the total world prison population has increased by around 20% since 2000, compared with the
approximately 50% increase in the number of imprisoned women and girls.
The EMCDDA best practice portal is a valuable resource for commissioners, practitioners and researchers looking to ensure that their work is based on the best possible evidence.
The welcome fall in the number of children in custody means that those who remain represent a more concentrated mix of very challenging young people, held in a smaller number of establishments that are increasingly unsuitable to meet their needs, and cared for by a staff group beset by shortages and a lack of training for their complex and demanding role.
This finding gives hope to the value of Mr Gove’s review; if the quality and availability of prison education can be improved, it appears that there are large numbers of prisoners committed to making a positive change to their lives with education a keystone to that progress.
The new Justice Secretary Michael Gove has made much of the need to have an ethical criminal justice system. One step hemight take would be to make the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman’s recommendations legally enforceable.
I think the main challenges will be as much to with the practicalities of ensuring that there are enough staff to ensure that prisoners get to classes and providing the right incentives to get talented teachers to work in custodial settings.
Quite what so many short sentences (with prisoners spending a maximum of 13 weeks inside) achieve, given the disruption to the lives of women and their children, is very unclear to me.
Inspectors concluded that the MCTC was a model custodial institution. The contrast with their’ findings on the state of adult male and young offender institutions could hardly be more stark.
The SPCR study has spawned a new MoJ report on the characteristics and needs of young adult (18-20 years old) prisoners and helps to inform resettlement planning.
