Incarcerated women

Abstract Despite a roughly equal number of men and women in the general population, women consistently have lower rates of incarceration than their male peers. The difference is not trivial; there are more than 10 men incarcerated for each woman in the United States. The War on Drugs from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s led to an increase of almost 900% in the population of incarcerated women. The bulk of this rise resulted from arrests for nonviolent drug-related charges. As the correctional system began to experience an influx of women, it became clear that they were distinct from their male peers and had specific treatment needs. The differences included epidemiology of psychiatric disorders, intensity of health service utilization, social stressors, and patterns of offending. The logical question arose as to whether women needed a different treatment approach in the correctional system than men. The term “gender-responsive programming” emerged and represented the idea that women have needs distinct from male peers that could best be met with treatment designed for women. This chapter will describe, given the current knowledge base, the patterns of offending and arrests for women versus men, the sociodemographics of incarcerated women, the psychopathology exhibited by incarcerated women, and how best to treat incarcerated women and implement this treatment within jails and prisons.