Posted February 20, 2008 10:25 PM (EST)
Last month, the Department of Justice released an alarming and little known statistic: the population of women prisoners has been growing at twice the rate of men since 1980, and in 2006 it increased at its fastest clip in five years. Because women are often the bedrock of their families and neighborhoods, this trend is damaging to entire communities. We must take immediate steps not only to curb women's rising incarceration rates but also to make sure that once they are released, women have the resources they need so they don't end up back in prison
Histories of sexual and physical abuse. Forty-eight to 88 percent of women inmates suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder due to prior physical or sexual abuse. Many women also are sexually abused during their incarceration by male prison guards. Not only can these traumas lead to or worsen drug and alcohol dependencies, they can also make holding down a steady job even more difficult than it is for male ex-prisoners, due to memory problems, depression and anxiety disorders.
As of 2004, more than 300,000 children had mothers who were incarcerated. These children are six times more likely to be incarcerated at some point in their lives. If we want to decrease the number of prisoners tomorrow, we have to help the mothers of today.
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