Washington, DC —The Sentencing Project released a report on April 3 documenting over a 525% increase in women’s imprisonment in the United States between 1980 and 2021. The report, Incarcerated Women and Girls, is the latest in a series of publications highlighting the 50-year legacy of mass incarceration in the United States as part of The Sentencing Project’s 50 Years and A Wake Up campaign.
“As this year marks fifty years since the United States began its dramatic increase in imprisonment, it is clearer than ever that our criminal legal system is not working,” said Amy Fettig, Executive Director of The Sentencing Project. “The continued overcriminalization of women and girls does nothing to improve public safety, but needlessly destroys lives, families and communities.”
While more men are imprisoned than women, the rate of growth for female incarceration is twice as high as that of men since 1980. In 2021, almost 976,000 women were under supervision of the criminal legal system. The report’s additional highlights:
In 2021, the imprisonment rate for Black women (62 per 100,000) was 1.6 times the rate of imprisonment for white women (38 per 100,000).
Latinx women were imprisoned at 1.3 times the rate of white women (49 vs. 38 per 100,000).
The rate of imprisonment for Black and Latinx women has declined since 2000, while the rate of imprisonment for white women has increased.
Idaho has the highest rate of incarcerated women, while Massachusetts has the lowest.
58% of imprisoned women in state prisons have a child under the age of 18.
Black and Native American girls are much more likely to be incarcerated than Asian, white, and Latinx girls.
Over one-third of incarcerated girls are held for status offenses, such as truancy and curfew violations, or for violating the terms of their probation.
The Sentencing Project promotes effective and humane responses to crime that minimize imprisonment and criminalization of youth and adults by promoting racial, ethnic, economic, and gender justice.
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