PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Why is the incarceration of women on the rise? That was the question at the center of a discussion hosted at the Eastern State Penitentiary on Monday, and it comes even as overall prison populations are decreasing.
The program, titled ‘Women Behind Bars: Why is Incarceration of Women on the Rise?,’ shed light on the present-day complexities of incarcerated women, and the challenges faced by women of reproductive age as they navigate pregnancy and motherhood within a system designed for men.
Currently, an eighth of that overall prison population in the U.S. is made up of women. Dr. Kerry Sautner, president and CEO of the Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site, said women of color are also still overly-represented, but white women prisoners have also increased in the last three years.
Dr. Jen Manion, Winkley Professor of History and Political Economy at Amherst College, was on hand to provide some history to the current trend.
“Poverty is the number one indicator that you're going to end up incarcerated in the early period,” they said. “And in early America, that meant formerly enslaved African American women. It meant Irish women who were indentured servants or servants, who finished their dentures and then could barely survive.”
According to Manion, women were never meant to be in prison, and it means their experiences there often go to extremes.
“She sort of got out from under the control of… whatever patriarchal authority was responsible for her,” they said. “And so the women who do end up in prison are treated terribly, they're treated as the worst kind of prisoners.”
But change is possible, according to Michelle Daniel Jones, a sixth year doctoral student in New York University’s American studies program.
“The biggest thing here is getting change with our legislators getting changes there with the bills that impact us so directly,” she said. “And you can do that by participating organizations that are focused on that.”