Jailing of women rising in the West

Utah goes from 30 in 1977 to 502 in 2004

By David Crary
Associated Press
Published: Sunday, May 21, 2006 12:33 a.m. MDT
E-MAIL | PRINT | FONT + - 
NEW YORK — Oklahoma and Mississippi, plus Utah and other Mountain states have set the pace in increasing the imprisonment of women, while several Northeastern states are curtailing the practice, according to a new report detailing sharp regional differences in the handling of female offenders.

The report, to be released today by the New York-based Women's Prison Association, is touted as the most comprehensive state-by-state breakdown of the huge increase in incarceration of women over the past 30 years.

Overall, the number of female state inmates serving sentences of more than a year grew by 757 percent between 1977 and 2004, nearly twice the 388 percent increase for men, the report said.

Though the surge occurred nationwide, it was most notable in the Mountain states, where the number of incarcerated women soared by 1,600 percent, the report said.

According to federal statistics cited in the report, Utah had 30 female inmates in 1977 and 502 in 2004, while comparable numbers increased from 72 to 1,900 in Colorado, 28 to 647 in Idaho, from two to 473 in Montana and from 187 to 2,545 in Arizona.

Idaho, Wyoming and Montana were among six states, along with Oklahoma, North Dakota and Hawaii, where women comprised more than 10 percent of the prison population in 2004 — compared to the national average of 7 percent. In Rhode Island, by contrast, only 3.2 percent of the inmates were women.

Story continues below
Oklahoma had the highest per capita imprisonment rate for women — 129 behind bars for every 100,000 women in its population. Mississippi was second with a rate of 107. Women in those states were roughly 10 times more likely to be imprisoned than women in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, which shared the lowest rate of 11.

Nationwide, there were 1.42 million inmates in state and federal prisons at the end of 2004, including 96,125 women — up from 11,212 in 1977.

Though the overall surge of women behind bars has continued in recent years, it has tapered off in the Northeast, the report said. From 1999 to 2004, it said, the number of female inmates dropped by 23 percent in New York and 21 percent in New Jersey — part of broader reductions that also cut the number of male inmates.

The report concurred with previous analyses attributing much of the nationwide increase in women's imprisonment to the war on drugs. The proportion of women serving time for drug offenses has risen sharply in recent years, while the proportion convicted of serious violent crimes has dropped, it said.

Bob Anez, a Corrections Department spokesman in Montana, confirmed that drug offenses — especially related to methamphetamine — were a major factor in the high proportion of female inmates in the state. Half the women imprisoned from January through March had committed meth-related offenses, he said.

Comments

You can be the first to comment on this story.