Women are the fastest-growing sector of the US prison population

Evidence

The most frequent justification for the inattention to women prisoners and to the particular issues surrounding women’s imprisonment is the relatively small proportion of women among incarcerated populations throughout the world. In most countries, the percentage of women among prison populations hovers around five percent. However, the economic and political shifts of the 1980s—the globalization of economic markets, the deindustrialization of the U.S. economy, the dismantling of such social service programs as Aid to Families of Dependent Children, and, of course, the prison construction boom—produced a significant acceleration in the rate of women’s imprisonment both inside and outside the United States. In fact, women remain today the fastest-growing sector of the U.S. prison population. This recent rise in the rate of women’s imprisonment points directly to the economic context that produced the prison industrial complex and that has had a devastating impact on men and women alike. — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 171

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to earlier chapters on the prison industrial complex’s economic origins; the 1980s economic shifts echo the book’s causal spine. — connects to: Neoliberal economic shifts of the 1980s drove the surge in women’s imprisonment.

Related

• Capital flight into prisons followed deindustrialization and welfare dismantling in the 1980s. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberal economic shifts of the 1980s drove the surge in women’s imprisonment. #expands (0.60)