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Thursday, August 18th, 2016

Women in jails are the fastest growing incarcerated population, study says

Author:     Jamiles Lartey
Source:     The Guardian (U.K.)
Publication Date:     Wednesday 17 August 2016 12.08 EDT
 Link: Women in jails are the fastest growing incarcerated population, study says
Stephan:   Here is some truly alarming news about the American Gulag. It is telling us that as a society our lack of social services is leaving thousands of women, many of whom are mentally ill, abandoned with nothing but jail in their future. And I think it is notable that I found this report in a British newspaper; why don't we see anyone in corporate media talking about this?
A woman makes a sandwich in a cell at the Los Angeles County women’s jail in Lynwood, California. Credit: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters

A woman makes a sandwich in a cell at the Los Angeles County women’s jail in Lynwood, California.
Credit: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters

NEW YORK, NEW YORK — Women held in local jails represent the fastest growing population of incarcerated people in the US, according to a new study. The researchers found that trauma, sexual violence and mental health issues were all closely wrapped up with the swelling numbers.

“While we started to see a decline in the incarceration and jailing of men, we haven’t seen a comparable kind of trend for women,” said Laurie Garduque, director of Justice Reform for the MacArthur Foundation, which co-published the report with the Vera Institute. Since 1970, the number of women in US jails has increased by 14 times, far outstripping the growth in the male prison population, even though in raw numbers there remain many more men locked up.

The majority of those women […]

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