Incarceration of women
Approximately 741,000 women are incarcerated in correctional facilities, a 17% increase since 2010 and the female prison population has been increasing across all continents. The list of countries by incarceration rate includes a main table with a column for the historical and current percentage of prisoners who are female.
Prison population
Globally, the vast majority of incarcerated people are men. Incarcerated women have been and continue to be treated differently by criminal justice systems around the world at every step of the process, from arrest to sentencing, to punitive measures used. This disparity is largely due to tangible demographic differences between the severity of crimes committed by male and female prison populations, as well as a persistent belief by society at large that female criminals are better able to be rehabilitated than their male counterparts.Although women form a minority in the global prison population, the population of incarcerated women is growing at a rate twice as fast as the male prison population. Those imprisoned in China, Russia, and the United States comprise the great majority of incarcerated people, including women, in the world. Trends observed in the global growth of the female prison population can be partly explained by evolving policies regarding the sentencing and parole of female inmates. As criminal justice systems across the world move towards gender-blind sentencing, this has resulted in a tremendous increase in the rate of female incarceration. Concurrent elimination of parole and toughening of penalties for parole violations in many areas of the world also contribute to high rates of re-entry and re-offending, further driving up rates of incarceration of women.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime website hosts data regarding prison populations around the world, including "Persons held - by sex, by age group" and "Persons held - by status and sex".
Social and political conditions leading to incarceration
International developments in the political response to social issues, specifically the global drug epidemic, have catalyzed many changes in the composition of the prison populations and, subsequently, the types of conditions prisoners experience while incarcerated. The war on drugs has accounted for the large population of female low-level offenders, usually imprisoned for narcotic use or possession. Western powers, particularly the United States, have largely advocated for the global proliferation of the so-called "war on drugs".While there is no globally uniform representation among female prisoners in terms of the types of crimes they are imprisoned for, it is widely acknowledged that there are a number of underlying social inequities which make affected women disproportionately more likely to commit crimes and therefore become incarcerated. The most prominent of these conditions is that of poverty, as well as the conditions that give rise to poverty. Globally, women in poor households tend to bear a disproportionate amount of work in regard to caring for the household, feeding the family, and educating the children. This is in tandem with educational inequalities, pay gaps, pregnancy, and heightened rates of physical and domestic abuses. Another inequity deemed partially culpable for the rate at which impoverished women, in particular, are incarcerated due to the lack of access to mental health care. Many incarcerated women suffer from mental illnesses, and their incarceration can be directly linked to an absence of treatment for their conditions.
Research has shown a significant link between females in prison and brain injury, which supports research that shows incarcerated females are overwhelmingly victims of domestic violence.
Prison conditions
Early facilities were considered inhumane with little regard for health and safety. Men and women were housed in a large room where the strong preyed on the weak. As of 1964, in most of the Western world, the guards in female prisons are no longer exclusively female. As of that year, both men and women work as guards in women's prisons in the United States. However, some states have laws requiring female officers as well as a female superintendent. While most states have only one or two institutions for women, some facilities are considered "unisex" and house both male and female inmates in separate areas.There is massive variation in the quality of living standards both between prisons around the world and between prisons within individual countries. Variations in national wealth, apportionment of national budgets and different approaches to criminal rehabilitation all contribute to the absence of uniformity in prison living standards. Other phenomena, such as the privatisation of prisons in many countries with large prison populations, such as the United States, also give rise to variability in the environmental quality of women's prisons. Once a corporation assumes governance over prison and its budget, the presiding government has relatively little oversight of the maintenance of prison standards and prisoner wellbeing. There are many ongoing political debates surrounding the continuation of private prisons.
Certain prison populations, including women, have special health needs which often go unmet. For example, one study in the journal Health and Social Care in the Community found that in England and Wales, which have the highest prison populations of any European countries, women's specific mental and physical health needs are under-researched and not sufficiently cared for, with 40% of female prisoners reporting long-term health problems in comparison with the male statistic of 33%.
By jurisdiction
Great Britain
In Great Britain, in 1996 a new policy was passed, and women no longer have to be restrained while giving birth when serving their sentence. The British services for human rights and the United Nations standard minimum rules for the treatment of prisoners say that no one should be subjected to degrading punishment. Some prisoners refuse to go to childcare events or funerals because of the humiliation the restraints show. Women in Britain fought for their right to not be restrained while giving birth to their child, however, they must be restrained while being escorted to and from the hospital. More women than men try to escape the prison system in Britain. Of those women who escape almost half escape while receiving medical attention at a hospital.Hong Kong
Circa 2017, according to the World Prisons Brief, women make up about 20.8% of Hong Kong's inmate population. Of any sovereign state or dependency, minus very small countries/microstates, Hong Kong, as of circa 2017, has the highest percentage of women in correctional supervision. In August 2017 the Hong Kong Correctional Services had 1,486 incarcerated women, and it had a total of 1,764 women under correctional supervision if the 279 on remand were included.Hong Kong has a number of women-only institutions including Bauhinia House, Tai Lam Centre for Women, Chi Lan Rehabilitation Centre, Lai King Correctional Institution, Lo Wu Correctional Institution, Wai Lan Rehabilitation Centre, and Nei Kwu Correctional Institution.
Mainland China
In general, statistical information in regards to the rate of incarceration for women in China has been found difficult to compare to other countries around the world. However, some scholars argued in 2003 that approximately one-fifth of the total number of women in the United States would be equivalent to that of the total population of women incarcerated in China.According to the International Centre for Prison Studies, as of August 2014, the Chinese women's prison population is the second-largest in the world with 84,600 female prisoners in total or 5.1% of the overall Chinese prison population.
Within the last decade, the rate of incarceration for women in China has increased by 46%. Women make up only 6% of the total population of individuals in prison within the country. While it is difficult to correctly evaluate the statistic regarding the total number of women incarcerated due to the underreporting of these cases, China is on track to imprison more women than the United States.
New Zealand
In New Zealand, there are three correctional facilities, specifically for women. These include Auckland Region Women's Corrections Facility, Arohata Women's Prison, and Christchurch Women's Prison. At these facilities, women are offered various prisoner assistance programs while they are serving their sentences in prison. These consist of baby unit spaces for new mothers, mental and physical disability assistance, feeding and bonding facilities, cultural hobbies, and special food accommodations for dietary restrictions. While many of these activities are permission-based and evaluated with a case-by-case approach, these prisons have started offering these options to women who are incarcerated in recent years.In New Zealand, the total number of convicted women increased by 111% between 1996 and 2005. In 1963, women made up 7.7% of those convicted in New Zealand's court system, with most causes of arrest being offences against property and some offences being crime against persons and/or assault. Then, in 1972, women's incarceration rates increased to 11% in lower court systems. Again, with mostly the same two leading convictions. As of 1996, prosecuted females on average had fewer previous convictions than prosecuted males in most first world countries such as New Zealand. The number of women incarcerated in New Zealand peaked in 2010 and has decreased since. As of 2014, the female conviction percentage is up to 23%. Crimes against property make up a higher percentage of the total 23% female conviction ratio, at 33%. According to a 1991 study published by the Department of Justice, Greg Newbold notes that in comparison to women, men were twice as likely to commit a more serious crime.
Although the number of males far outweighs the number of females in the correctional facilities of New Zealand, the rate of increase of women incarcerated is growing at a pace significantly higher than that of males. Overall, the incarceration rate of women has been growing all over the world, not just in New Zealand. The most recent advocated hypothesis regarding why the rise is occurring is that women's crime rates are not increasing, rather the criminal justice system is changing. This change has led to an increase in attention to minor offences, which women are statistically more likely to commit. Gill McIvor, Professor of Criminology at the University of Stirling, supports this hypothesis with research published in 2010 which confirms that the rise of female incarceration rates in New Zealand is not due to the increasing severity of crimes committed by women. As well as this, McIvor also makes the claim that New Zealand women are overrepresented in less serious types of crimes such as theft and fraud and underrepresented in more serious types of crime such as crimes of violence.
According to statistics from 2014, there has been a slight increase of women prisoners in each of these facilities. Although the Department of Corrections notes that women in New Zealand only make up 7.4% of the total incarceration population, the increases in population are connected to four main crime categories specifically. These include illicit drug offences, theft and related offences, fraud and related offences, and robbery, extortion and related offences. Three of these four categories saw an increase of 60%, however, the lowest category saw the smallest increase at 40%.