Disparity Between Male and Female Incarceration, Historically and in Today’s System
Recent decades has seen an increase in the number of incarcerated women. For instance, in US in 1990, there were nearly 600,000 women in prisons compared to more than one million women in prison in 2000 (Walsh, 2010). These figures are attributive not to the increased number of women offenders but to the outcome of the larger forces that continue to shape the crime policies (Walsh, 2010). The statistics explain why conventionally female lawbreakers have been at the sidelines of the criminal justice system, and this was when a vast majority of criminal offenders were male. Recently, things have changed for women where adoption of various policies such as women rights movement and the rise of feminism have started reversing the venerable disregard of female criminality. In addition, this is the marked increase in female criminality as opposed to the olden times when there was gender distorted demographics of criminal behavior.
Various US state governments have adopted the three strike laws decrees that permit state courts to enforce harsher sentence on persons convicted of more than three serious criminal offences which are mostly at the felony level. These statutes increase the chances of a person committing a felony the third time and more to serve a life sentence rather than receive punishment. This follows the voters’ adoption of the 1994s proposition 184 that imposed longer prison terms for repeated offenders (Muraskin, 2012). According to the statutes, there are first strikers, second strikers, and third strikers whose sentence terms increase in that order to a life sentence in the end. In the second strike offense, a person with a previous serious felony conviction is legible for a doubled term sentence under the law for the new felony conviction, and this is in case he commits another new felony.
In the third strike offense, any new felony after conviction of two or more previous serious crimes is legible for life imprisonment. The third new lawbreaking does not need to be just as serious or violent as the latter ones, but as long as it is a felony, the person gets life imprisonment with the earliest probable parole coming after 25years (Muraskin, 2012). However, in some cases, courts may choose to ignore the prior crimes during sentencing and impose a lesser time than the required under the law for a second or third striker. Nevertheless, the incarceration has had a significant impact on the women offenders. For instance, since the adoption of the statutes, female incarceration has increased markedly, and this is not for the increase in the criminality of the women but majorly because of the many other factors such rise of feminism (Walsh, 2010). This has proved an unfair game for women who enjoyed the social attributes in the society where the criminal system delineated them from criminal activities compared to males. This is because of the fact that women wanted equality; they had to pay up in the same measure when it comes to law, and this is because any felony can trigger a third strike making the law which was intended to target dangerous repeated felons lead to incarceration of other group of offenders.
The application of the three strike laws is thus an injustice for most women who may commit petty offences compared to their male counterparts who may commit murders.
References
Muraskin, R. (2012). Women and justice: It’s a crime (5th ed.). Saddle river, N.J: Pearson
Education Inc.
Walsh, J.E. (2010). The three strikes laws. New Jersey: Greenwood Publishing Group.
