In the United States, 1.3 million children have mothers who are incarcerated, according to a report released late last year.
Seven out of 10 women in prison are mothers and two-thirds are mothers with minor children.
The Women’s Foundation of California found women in California are nearly two times more likely than men to be in prison for petty theft with a prior conviction and three times more likely to be in prison for petty forgery or fraud.
Since 2011, California has given counties more responsibility for criminal justice policy decisions, meaning those same dynamics now may be playing out within county jails, the report finds.
When Proposition 47, passed last November, it retroactively reduced some minor theft related crimes from felonies to misdemeanors—drug related crimes (small amounts) were also reduced to misdemeanors.
From the period of Nov. 5, 2014 to Sept 16, a total of 4,430 inmates have been released from state prison under Proposition 47—including 36 women through the post-release community supervision program, 55 discharged from their sentence, and 250 paroled.
A review of statistics from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reveals that there are gender differences in treatment within the criminal justice system, that long-term impacts of a felony conviction differ between men and women, and women’s histories of abuse prior to incarceration impact their experiences while incarcerated and after release.
The vast majority of incarcerated women (85 to 90 percent) have experienced physical or sexual abuse, the report finds.
The report states that since women are more likely than men to be convicted of drug felonies, they have more difficulty accessing public benefits and housing.
For example, a 2001–2006 study of four diverse states found that approximately 61 percent of men had secured employment post-release compared to only 37 percent of formerly incarcerated women.
