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| Female inmate population growing |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 09/20/2004 |
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Ohio is creating a fourth prison for women inmates as the population of female prisoners was predicted to grow by 28 percent over the next eight years, more than twice the rate of men, the state said. The state is transferring male inmates out of a minimum-security camp at Trumbull Correctional Institution in eastern Ohio and plans to move 300 women to that facility by January, the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction said last Thursday. Officials say the state will have more than 3,600 women behind bars in the year 2012, up from about 2,800 at the end of last year. By comparison, the male population was predicted to grow about 13 percent over the same time period. Officials and advocates for prison reform debate the reasons for the growth, but generally agree that a key factor is the shrinking number of options for staying out of prison when it comes to sentencing. "The courts are frustrated with the female offenders who continually commit felony offenses," said Correction Department Director Reginald Wilkinson. Nationally, the Department of Justice says the number of women in state and federal prisons grew 5 percent from 2002 to 2003, compared with 2.7 percent for men. The annual rate of growth for women inmates has also been higher for women than men since 1995, the Justice Department said. The war on drugs and its impact on women is partly responsible for the growth, said Ann Jacobs, executive director of the New York-based Women's Prison Association. "It isn't necessarily that there's a lot more drug use; it's that we've put so much of our resources into apprehension and conviction and mandatory sentences, and are therefore incarcerating people for longer periods of time," she said. Women, low on the totem pole of drug deals, typically have fewer options for cutting deals with prosecutors, Jacobs said. They also tend to have more obligations for child care when they leave prison, which may cause them to skip required programs, she added. |
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