PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — There has been a lot of focus on trying to reduce the number of incarcerated people in the United States.
Progress has happened on that front, but that progress is not equal.
In Pennsylvania, the numbers for men have gone down, but the number of women incarcerated continues to increase.
Part of the reason involves the way criminals are sentenced.
"One of the most important contributors to this explosion in the number of women in prison, really, is an artifact of sentencing policy," said Villanova University Professor of Sociology and Criminology Dr. Jill McCorkel, who is also the founder and the executive director of the Philadelphia Justice Project for Women and Girls.
"What we've seen over the last couple of decades is that women are represented in drug offenses at roughly similar rates as they were in the 1980s. What changed fundamentally, there is mandatory minimum sentences, and mandatory minimums meant that women were not able to benefit from judicial discretion in the way that they had prior to the war on drugs."
Listen to Dr. McCorkel's full interview with KYW Newsradio In Depth in your podcast player, and get In Depth anywhere you get your podcasts.
