Female Offenders in State and Federal Prisons: A Comparative Study

Introduction and Background

Increasingly, female offenders and issues associated with their incarceration have been identified as a problem of concern. Evidence suggests that female offenders represent a growing population within the U.S. penal system. Between 1986 and 1991, the number of female inmates in state prisons increased 75% (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1994). Between 1981 and 1991, the number of females incarcerated in federal penal institutions also increased by 24%. Since 1980, the population of women inmates has increased by more than 200% (Gabel & Johnston, 1995). Women inmates currently account for 9% of the entire prison population, and of this group, 57% are women of color.

The majority of women are arrested for nonviolent crimes. Typical offenses include fraud, use of illegal drugs, and prostitution (Singer, Bussey, Song, & Lunghofer, 1995). Evidence also exists suggesting that incarcerated women experience many problems in addition to their criminal acts — problems that may have influenced their engagement in criminal activity (Gabel & Johnston, 1995; Singer et al., 1995).

As the numbers of incarcerated women has continued to increase in both state and federal prisons, there remains a need to more fully understand the factors influencing and associated with the imprisonment of women in U.S. society. It is important to gain a more comprehensive perspective on the differences that exist between female offenders in state and federal prisons, the crimes for which they were charged, the sentencing associated with their incarceration, and the types of services and treatment programs available to them. Such information is critical for those who work with females in the justice system, as well as for policy makers concerned with facilitating and implementing more effective policies aimed at deterring female crime.

The purpose of the study is to provide an in-depth overview of female offenders incarcerated within federal and state prisons. An effort is made to specifically obtain information on the experiences of female offenders in California. It is the intent of the study to provide information on the differences that may exist between federal and state female offenders — information that may be useful in further aiding professionals in the criminal justice system in developing and implementing future strategies for deterring female crime, initiating plans for more conducive prison environments for women where needed, and exploring policy options in relation to female offenders based on empirical evidence.

The rationale for the study is based on the fact that female crime and incarceration have steadily increased since the 1980s. The increase in female offenders is documentation that there are factors influencing these trends. One such factor may be the experience of imprisonment itself. As many female offenders will be released from prison at some point in their lifetimes, the potential for future offenses exists. While each individual woman is ultimately responsible for decisions made regarding criminal behavior, there is a need to more fully identify factors within the state and federal prison systems that may or may not influence and act as a deterrent to future criminal behavior.

Female Offender: a woman who is incarcerated in a federal or state prison after having been sentenced on the basis of having committed and been found guilty of a crime.

While the findings of the study will have utility in further understanding female incarceration within the U.S. federal and state prison system, it will not be possible to generalize the findings to women offenders and the experience of incarceration outside of the U.S. The study findings are further limited in that secondary data sources were utilized to gather the information necessary to address the purpose and objectives of the study. While this information is valid and useful, it would have been helpful to also include information obtained via surveys and interviews with women offenders. However, such research efforts were beyond the scope of this study.

The research hypotheses investigated within the study include:

Null Hypothesis 1: There are no differences between state and federal female offenders.

Alternative Hypothesis 1: State and federal female offenders will vary on the basis of the types of crimes committed and for which they were charged, as well as sentencing and other factors.

History of Women and Incarceration

According to Rafter (1985), at the beginning of the 19th century, relatively few women were imprisoned, and those who were incarcerated were confined in separate quarters or wings of men's prisons. Similar to male prisoners, women suffered from filthy conditions, overcrowding, and harsh treatment. Additionally, women had to endure even more hardships, including sexual abuse, which was reportedly a common occurrence. According to Freedman (1981), sexual abuse was apparently so accepted that one prison in Indiana actually ran a prostitution service for male guards using female prisoners. Very often female prisoners were expected to fend for themselves and were left completely on their own, as prisons refused to use money to hire female guards or matrons. Women also had less access to physicians and chaplains and did not go to workshops, mess halls, or exercise yards as men did. Food and needlework were brought to their quarters, and they remained in that area for the full term of their sentence.

As reported by Rafter (1985), criminal conviction and imprisonment of women surged after the Civil War. Freedman (1981) indicated that this occurred in the North as a consequence of men's absence during wartime, the rise of industrialization, and the impact of the dominant sexual ideology of nineteenth-century Victorianism. According to Freedman, Victorianism created a double standard that supported the criminalization of certain behaviors for women but not for men. By mid-century, the spiraling rates of incarceration of women in both the North and South necessitated the emergence of separate women's quarters — a practical necessity that opened the door to broader changes in the nature of women's imprisonment.

According to Freedman (1981), many advocates also began a campaign to end the sexual abuse of women in prisons, which helped to influence the opening of separate prisons for women. By 1940, twenty-three states had separate women's prisons. These became known as "independent" women's prisons, even though they were independent only in their physical construction. In all other aspects, women's prisons fostered dependency in incarcerated women and remained an integral part of the broader prison system.

While prisons for women did not develop as separate institutions until almost a century after men's prisons, the more significant distinction lies in the establishment of a bifurcated — or two-part — system, the roots of which can be found in the patriarchal and white supremacist aspects of American life at the time. Understanding this bifurcation represents a step toward understanding the incarceration of women in the U.S.

On the one hand, there were custodial institutions, which corresponded largely to men's prisons. The purpose of custodial prisons was to warehouse prisoners, with no pretense of rehabilitation. On the other hand, there were reformatories, which were intended to be more benevolent institutions that "uplifted" or "improved" the character of the women held there. According to Freedman, reformatories had no male counterparts. Almost every state had a custodial women's prison, but in the Northeast and Midwest the majority of incarcerated women were held in reformatories. In the South, the few reformatories that existed were exclusively for white women. These differences were not, in essence, geographical; they were racial. The women in the custodial institutions were Black, whether in the North or the South, and had to undergo the most degrading conditions, while it was mainly white women who were sent to reformatories — institutions that upheld an ostensible philosophy of benevolence and sisterly, therapeutic ideals.

As explained by Freedman (1981), while reformatories housed white female prisoners, prison camps emerged in which African-American women prisoners were confined. Techniques of slavery were largely used within both prison camps and reformatories, with states forcing women to work on state-owned penal plantations as well as leasing women to local farms, mines, and railroads. Women were forced to work on chain gangs and were subjected to brutal and degrading treatment — including being whipped in the presence of men and being forced to defecate where they worked, in front of men.

Eventually, central penitentiaries were built or rebuilt, and many women were transferred there from prison farms because they were considered "dead hands" compared with men. Like the prison camps, custodial women's prisons were overwhelmingly Black, regardless of region. Women in custodial prisons were frequently convicted of felony charges — most commonly crimes against property, often petty theft. Only about a third of female felons were serving time for violent crimes. Conditions in custodial prisons were horrendous: generally unsanitary, lacking adequate toilet and bathing facilities, with medical attention rarely available. Women were either left totally idle or forced into hard labor, and those with mental health problems were locked in solitary confinement and ignored.

According to Freedman (1981), as the 20th century unfolded, industrialization brought fundamental changes in social relations as well as the emergence of the Progressive reform movement. It was in this context that reformatories for women proliferated. The newer reformatories were more humane — often staffed by women, which eliminated much male abuse. They resulted in more freedom of movement and a variety of work opportunities in prison operations. Children of prisoners up to two years old could stay in most institutions. These institutions usually had cottages, flower gardens, and no fences. They offered discussions on the law, academics, and training, and women were often paroled more readily than in custodial institutions (Freedman, 1981). However, the women in reformatories were largely white and from the working class, with fewer women of color incarcerated in them.

Rafter (1985) explained that Black women were not expected to act like "ladies" and were therefore reportedly deemed unworthy of rehabilitation. Reformatory training was focused on fostering ladylike behavior and perfecting housewifely skills — encouraging dependency and women's subjugation. Another aspect of reformatory retraining was to isolate women and strip them of environmental influences in order to instill new values. Family ties were obstructed, with letters arriving perhaps every two months and subject to censorship. Visits were allowed only four times a year, and only for those on an approved list. Sentencing was often open-ended, based on the notion that a woman would stay for as long as it took to accomplish the task of reforming her.

Beginning in the 1930s, as radicalism was repressed and both the progressive and feminist movements declined, women offenders were returned to penal institutions (Rafter, 1985). The reformatory buildings were filled with prisoners and conditions of incarceration deteriorated extensively, suffering from cutbacks and lack of funding. Increasingly, white women convicted of misdemeanors were given probation, paroled, or sent back to local jails. As white women left the reformatories, those buildings were transformed into custodial prisons, repeating the terrible conditions of the past.

During the last two decades of the 20th century, the rates of incarceration of women increased significantly. According to Mumola and Beck (1996), despite these increases, the rate of incarceration for women continued to be far lower than for men (51 out of 100,000 women as compared to 819 out of 100,000 men). However, based on information provided by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (1997), the number of women incarcerated in prisons and jails grew at a faster rate than the number of men. Between 1985 and 1995, the number of incarcerated men doubled — from 691,800 to 1,437,600 — but the number of women tripled, from 40,500 to 113,100. According to Gilliard and Beck (1997), in 1997, women accounted for 6.4% of all prisoners nationwide, up from 4.1% in 1980 and 5.7% in the early 1990s.

Theoretical Frameworks for Female Criminality

Historically, theoretical views on those who engaged in criminal behavior posited that the offender was best understood as a wrongdoer or sinner who needed to be punished (Forer, 1994). In early accounts of female offenders, they were described as representative of an evil class who needed punitive measures rather than rehabilitation. Potential factors external to the individual that may have influenced engagement in criminal offenses were ignored, and blame was placed on the individual, her family, and genetic effects (Forer, 1994).

With the ongoing increases in the rate of female incarceration, other theories emerged to explain female criminality that include consideration of environmental factors. Simon and Landis (1991) identified four major theories of why women commit crimes. The first is based on the work of Adler, suggesting that as women have become more liberated within society, they have taken on roles that were traditionally male. As a consequence, women are thought to behave in ways more characteristically associated with males — more aggressively and assertively. Known as the masculinity thesis, this theory holds that "good girls are still those who maintain their allegiance to traditional social roles, while bad girls are those who act like men" (Simon & Landis, 1991, p. 2). Thus, the increase of females in prisons is largely equated with changes that have occurred as women have become more masculine in a more liberated world.

A second theory identified by Simon and Landis (1991) is the opportunity thesis. Similar to the masculinity thesis, this theory suggests that as women attain social positions similar to men, they also begin to engage in and develop criminal trends and behavioral patterns similar to men. Criminality is largely the result of and influenced by women's place within the social structure, the occupational sphere, and the personal and family sphere. This theory places extensive importance on the occupational sphere, suggesting that as the employment patterns of men and women become more similar, so too will their patterns of employment-related crimes. Critics of this theory argue that it is useful only in explaining white-collar crime rather than other types of crimes committed by female offenders.

A third theory is the opportunity/marginalization thesis, which suggests that women commit crimes due to the lack of opportunities available to them to earn money. While greater freedom and rights have been granted to women, equality in economic opportunity has not been made accessible to all women. Female offenders, on the basis of this theory, remain in employment situations largely characterized by poor pay and unrewarding, insecure work. Thus, female crime represents a rational response to poverty and economic insecurity (Simon & Landis, 1991).

The fourth theory reviewed by Simon and Landis (1991) is the chivalry thesis, which suggests that in response to the women's movement, the criminal justice system has lessened its leniency toward women who commit crimes. With chivalry no longer extended to women, the criminal justice system has adopted the mentality of "if it's equality they want, it's equality they'll get" (Simon & Landis, 1991, p. 12). However, the authors note that there is little evidence of true chivalry in the court system. When favors are granted, white, upper-class women are most often the recipients. Therefore, since the typical female offender is not a white, upper-class woman, the potential that chivalry meaningfully impacts female criminality is doubtful.

A fifth theory, not reviewed by Simon and Landis, is also of relevance to women and criminality and offers an important conceptual foundation for this study. This framework suggests that environmental factors play a major role in whether a woman engages in criminal behavior. One such factor is the experience of victimization — both child and adult abuse. Herman (1992) suggested that adults who experienced abuse as children have difficulty negotiating the demands of adult life. With limited skills for coping with everyday adult demands, females may find it difficult to engage in non-criminal behaviors. In a study conducted by Pollack-Byrne (1990), an association was found between female criminalization and abuse, further suggesting the relevance of considering abuse as it impacts the long-term behaviors of women.