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History

Women prisoners at the Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman) post office in Sunflower County, Mississippi, c. 1930

In the United States, authorities began housing women in correctional facilities separate from men in the 1870s. The first American female correctional facility with dedicated buildings and staff was the Mount Pleasant Female Prison in Ossining, New York; the facility had some operational dependence on nearby Sing Sing, a men's prison.

Unlike prisons designed for men in the United States, state prisons for women evolved in three waves, as described in historical detail in "Partial Justice: Women in State Prisons" by Nicole Hahn Rafter. First, women prisoners were imprisoned alongside men in "general population", where they were subject to sexual attacks and daily forms of degradation. Then, in a partial attempt to address these issues, women prisoners were removed from general population and housed separately, but then subject to neglect wherein they did not receive the same resources as men in prisons. In a third stage of development, women in prison were then housed completely separately in fortress-like prisons, where the goal of punishment was to indoctrinate women into traditional feminine roles.

Despite the widespread historical shifts in female incarceration, there have been documented instances of women being held in men's prisons well into the twentieth century, one such example being the nearly two years that Assata Shakur was imprisoned, primarily in men's facilities, in the 1970s. In 1973 Shakur was held in the Middlesex County Jail in New Jersey, supposedly due to its proximity to the courthouse. She was the first, and last, woman ever imprisoned there, and was held in deplorable conditions including isolation and twenty-four hour observation. While Shakur was eventually transferred to a women's prison, her treatment illustrates the fact that women were held in male facilities far into the twentieth century, and indicates that racial prejudice continues to play a pivotal role in determining how women are treated during a period of incarceration.

Since the late 1970s, prosecution of drug cases has been the central contributor to both the expansion of prisons and the “philosophical shift” to that of a more punitive system. In the early 1980s, the Nixon administration introduced the political term “War on Drugs,” condemning all unapproved drug use. This effort was further enforced by the Reagan administration who championed the sales of illegal drugs as a critical political issue. The passage of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines compelled judges to give lengthy sentences even when they believed the defendant was not a threat to society. The guidelines were very fixed, providing a “detailed list of point allocations for every illegal drug and specific sentence for the amount possessed or sold.” These strict guidelines sent men and women away for decades. The number of women in prison and the time they spent inside grew significantly throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The War on Drugs has been a major contributor to the increase in U.S. incarceration. More so, it has also expanded the criminalization of people by race and gender. For example, there has been a distinct increase in the number of incarcerated African American and Latina women in the U.S.

Even though the number of crimes committed by women has remained relatively constant, the rate of imprisonment has continued to increase. As of 1997 over 135,000 women in the United States were in prisons and jails. "More than 950,000 women were under correctional supervision in 1998, about 1% of the US female population. In the past decade, the numbers and proportions of women have increased in terms of all components of the system: jail, probation, parole, and prison". Many state that this is a factor of increased incarceration in response to drug offenses. "Approximately 55% of women in prison are serving their first prison sentence. Although drug users are less likely to be imprisoned for violent offenses than non-drug users, women incarcerated for drug convictions are still likely to be placed in maximum-security facilities". African American women are the largest group to be incarcerated as a result of drug crimes.