{"id":865,"date":"2016-01-19T17:23:05","date_gmt":"2016-01-19T17:23:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/?p=865"},"modified":"2016-01-19T17:23:05","modified_gmt":"2016-01-19T17:23:05","slug":"incarcerated-women-in-a-double-bind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/2016\/01\/19\/incarcerated-women-in-a-double-bind\/","title":{"rendered":"Incarcerated Women in a Double Bind"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"At<\/a>
At the Indiana Women’s Prison (established in 1873, the first adult women’s correctional facility in the U.S.). Lwp Kommunik\u00e1ci\u00f3, Flickr CC.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Many more men are incarcerated than women, but from 1980 to 2014, the number of women in state and federal prisons rose from just over 13,000 to more than 106,000, making women the fastest growing prison populatio<\/a>n<\/a> in the U.S. This drastic increase is due in part to the War on Drugs and the shift to a \u201ctough-on-crime<\/a>\u201d logic in the 1970s and \u201880s. For women, the mass incarceration<\/a> era doesn\u2019t just exert tougher penalties; it also carries over an earlier, paternalistic way of disciplining women.<\/p>\n

<\/div>Before mass incarceration, women\u2019s prisons operated under rehabilitative models. These viewed women\u2019s criminal behavior as a result of their vulnerability or dependency, rather than dangerousness. Inmates were sometimes called \u201cgirls\u201d and referred to the warden as \u201cdaddy.\u201d Later tough-on-crime policies increased security, abolished mandatory counseling, and emphasized order and control in women\u2019s prisons. Still, some contemporary prisons maintain a paternalistic attitude by offering women \u201ctreatment\u201d that focuses exclusively their perceived inability to make good choices in the face of challenges from men, drugs, or a history of abuse.For women, the mass incarceration era doesn\u2019t just exert tougher penalties; it also carries over an earlier, paternalistic way of disciplining women.<\/span><\/p>\n
In other words, incarcerated women are hit with a double bind. Strict sentencing policies ignore social context and drastically increase the number of women in prison, while the paternalism of the past shapes how the criminal justice system interprets and judges their behavior and prospects for rehabilitation.<\/h5>\n