Incarceration of Women: The Global Context

<em>The number and extent of Women detained in the United States have expanded emphatically during the earlier ten years. However, the way Women’s imprisonment rates remain essentially lower than men's (51 for every 100,000 Women versus 819 for every 100,000 men),1 the quantity of Women in penitentiaries and correctional facilities is expanding at a faster rate than men's. Somewhere in the range of 1985 and 1995, the number of men expanded considerably, from 691,800 to 1,437,600, while the number of Women expanded by multiple times, from 40,500 to 113,100. 2 Women made up 6.4 percent of all convicts in the United States by mid-year 1997, up from 4.1 percent in 1980 and 5.7 percent in 1990. </em>