Women in Criminal Justice: Incarceration, Reentry, and Reform

More than one million women are under some form of correctional supervision in the United States, and the number of women behind bars has grown by over 600 percent since 1980. Women in the criminal justice system now number 186,244 in prisons and jails as of 2023, make up a growing share of arrests, and face a set of circumstances — trauma histories, caregiving responsibilities, pregnancy, and facilities built for men — that differ sharply from what men encounter.¹

How Many Women Are Locked Up

The 2023 count of 186,244 incarcerated women represented a 22 percent jump over the previous year as populations rebounded from pandemic-era declines. The national female imprisonment rate was 51 per 100,000, but state-level numbers varied enormously. Idaho locked up women at 152 per 100,000; Rhode Island’s rate was 6.¹

Where women are held is itself distinctive. About 32 percent of convicted incarcerated women sit in local jails, more than double the roughly 13 percent share for the overall convicted incarcerated population.² In the federal system, women made up 12.5 percent of sentenced individuals in fiscal year 2024, with an average sentence of 33 months versus 57 months for men.³

The Council on Criminal Justice projects the total number of women under correctional control will reach 1.1 million by 2035, with the women’s prison population rising 27 percent and the jail population 20 percent over that span. Imprisoning a woman costs between $87,000 and $122,000 per year, 25 to 75 percent more than the average cost for a man, driven by medical needs, staffing, and the smaller scale of women’s facilities.⁴

How the Numbers Got This High

Women’s imprisonment was low and stable for most of the 20th century. Between 1978 and 2007, women’s state imprisonment rates grew by 560 percent, roughly double the 240 percent increase for men. Women’s share of state prisoners doubled from 4 percent in 1978 to nearly 8 percent by 2019, and their share of local jail populations rose from about 6 percent to 15 percent.⁵

Drug policy was a major accelerant. By 2023, 26 percent of women in state prisons were serving time for drug offenses, up from 12 percent in 1986, with another 18 percent in for property crimes.¹ As of 2018, more than half of women in prison were sentenced for drug or property offenses, compared to less than a third of men.⁵ Rates peaked around 2007, dropped sharply in 2020, and have since climbed back up, with recent growth concentrated in rural counties.⁶

Who Is Getting Locked Up

The racial composition of women’s incarceration has shifted considerably. A Council on Criminal Justice analysis found the Black-white female imprisonment disparity ratio fell 71 percent between 2000 and 2020, from 6.3-to-1 to 1.8-to-1. Black women’s imprisonment rate dropped 56 percent over roughly the same period while white women’s rate rose 57 percent.⁷

As of 2023, imprisonment rates per 100,000 were 68 for Black women, 51 for Latina women, and 41 for white women.¹ American Indian and Alaska Native women face the steepest rates of any group, 3.7 times higher than white women and 2.2 times higher than Black women in a 2019 analysis.⁵

In federal sentencing from 2017 through 2021, Hispanic women received sentences 27.8 percent longer than white women and were 29.7 percent less likely to receive a probationary sentence. Black women were 11.2 percent less likely than white women to get probation. Across all cases, women received sentences 29.2 percent shorter than men on average.⁸

How Women End Up in the System

The routes women travel into criminal justice involvement are shaped, over and over in the research, by overlapping histories of trauma, abuse, poverty, and addiction.

Over 90 percent of justice-involved women have experienced some form of childhood trauma, and between 50 and 75 percent report histories of sexual violence. More than 70 percent of women in prisons and jails report prior victimization by an intimate partner, and roughly 30 percent of women serving time for murder or manslaughter were protecting themselves or a loved one during the incident.⁹

Substance use runs through these histories. Between 69 and 72 percent of justice-involved women meet criteria for a substance use disorder, compared to 57 percent of men.⁹ A study of over 1,200 substance-abusing female offenders found the most common pathway to arrest was drug use without childhood victimization (about 46 percent), and the second most common was childhood victimization followed by drug use and then arrest (about 36 percent). Women in the victimization-inclusive group had dramatically higher rates of familial drug use, parental incarceration, and foster care placement.¹⁰

Economic precarity figures in too. One in five women in state and federal prisons was homeless in the year before arrest, compared to 13 percent of men. And 47 states have laws that can criminalize non-offending parents for failing to prevent child abuse, even when the parent is themselves a victim of the abuser.⁹

Life Inside: Healthcare, Pregnancy, and Mental Health

Correctional facilities were designed around men, and women’s healthcare inside reflects that. An estimated 55,000 to 58,000 pregnant women are admitted to U.S. jails and prisons each year.¹¹ In some state prison systems, documented miscarriage rates run between 19 and 22 percent, well above the general population.¹² Comprehensive national data on pregnancy outcomes in custody does not exist, a gap the Government Accountability Office has flagged as a barrier to improving care.¹³

Few facilities provide contraception, only about one-third maintain written breastfeeding or lactation policies, and some force pregnant women to undergo opioid withdrawal rather than offering recommended medication-assisted treatment.¹¹¹² Between 66 and 68 percent of incarcerated women have a history of mental health conditions, and the custody environment itself can re-traumatize women with histories of abuse.

Shackling During Labor

For decades, incarcerated women could be restrained during pregnancy, labor, and delivery. As of 2022, 39 states, the District of Columbia, and the federal government had passed laws banning restraints during at least labor and delivery, though scope and compliance vary.¹⁴ The federal First Step Act of 2018 prohibits shackling of pregnant women in federal custody, though the vast majority of incarcerated women are held in state and local facilities that law does not reach.¹⁵

Prison Nurseries

Nine states operate prison nursery programs that allow mothers to live with their infants while serving sentences: New York, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, Ohio, Washington, and West Virginia. New York’s program at Bedford Hills, dating to the early 1900s, is the oldest and houses up to 25 mothers and infants.¹⁶¹⁷ Kansas, North Dakota, Virginia, and Wisconsin are weighing new or expanded programs.

Mothers and Their Children

About 60 percent of women in state prisons are mothers of minor children.¹⁸ On any given day, 2.7 million children have a parent in prison or jail, and over 5.2 million have experienced parental incarceration at some point.¹⁹

When mothers are locked up, fathers take over caregiving only about 28 to 31 percent of the time; grandparents step in roughly half the time.²⁰ Over 40 percent of children with incarcerated mothers end up in foster care, a higher rate than for children of incarcerated fathers. Over 70 percent of incarcerated women are housed more than 100 miles from their homes, and more than 60 percent report being unable to communicate regularly with their children because of costs, distance, or restrictive visiting policies.¹⁸

The federal Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 requires states to initiate termination of parental rights when a child has been in foster care for 15 of the most recent 22 months.²¹¹⁹²²

Getting Out: Reentry Barriers

Leaving prison is often harder for women than for men. Women face a significantly heightened risk of drug overdose in the first two weeks after release compared to formerly incarcerated men, and up to 61 percent of women are rearrested within three years, frequently for technical violations of supervision rather than new criminal conduct.²³

Employment is a wall. A study of formerly incarcerated women found they were statistically less likely than non-incarcerated women to receive positive responses from employers, at a rate of 5.5 percent versus 8 percent. Women reported that disclosing a felony conviction on an application effectively ended the hiring process.²⁴ Housing discrimination contributes to higher rates of homelessness among formerly incarcerated women than among the general population or formerly incarcerated men. Child welfare agencies often impose rigid, sometimes conflicting requirements for family reunification, and inflexible supervision can return women to custody over issues like insufficient income or a missed appointment.²³

Public benefits add another barrier. As of 2021, 21 states imposed full or modified bans on food assistance (SNAP) for people with felony drug convictions, and 24 states restricted cash assistance (TANF).¹⁹

What’s Working, and What’s Being Tried

A growing body of evidence supports programs designed specifically for women. A 2016 meta-analysis of 37 studies found that over 75 percent reported lower recidivism for participants in gender-responsive programs compared to control groups, with reductions typically ranging from 10 to 30 percent.²⁵ Established curricula include Seeking Safety (trauma and substance abuse), Healing Trauma (peer-facilitated, showing significant decreases in depression, anxiety, and PTSD symptoms), Beyond Violence (one study found a 79 percent decrease in the odds of recidivism), and Moving On (cognitive-behavioral).²⁶ The Women’s Risk and Needs Assessment is currently the only validated, peer-reviewed risk and needs tool designed specifically for justice-involved women.

Several states are trying to keep women out of prison in the first place. Washington State established a family sentencing alternative in 2010, Oregon in 2016, with similar pilots in California, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Tennessee.¹⁹²⁷²⁸

The Council on Criminal Justice modeled broader changes and found that cutting women’s time served by 50 percent in Illinois and North Carolina would produce estimated annual net savings of $62 million to $102 million per state, with a projected public safety impact of roughly 100 additional annual arrests per state, 90 percent of which would be for nonviolent offenses.⁴

Between 2016 and 2025, five states passed laws allowing courts to consider histories of domestic violence as a mitigating factor in sentencing and resentencing decisions.²⁹³⁰³¹ The Council on Criminal Justice has also established a Women’s Justice Commission chaired by former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, whose work has flagged the lack of criminal justice data routinely disaggregated by both sex and race as a core obstacle to reform.³²

Girls in the Juvenile System

The numbers above cover adult women; girls are counted separately. On a typical day, 4,349 girls are in residential placement, 15 percent of all confined youth. Placement has declined 71 percent since 2001, but girls now account for 31 percent of youth arrests, up from 19 percent in 1985. Native American girls have an incarceration rate of 39 per 100,000, four times higher than white girls; Black girls are incarcerated at three times the white rate. About 26 percent of incarcerated girls are held for status offenses or probation violations, and girls make up 40 percent of all youth in placement for status offenses.¹

Transgender Women in Custody

Transgender women are disproportionately represented in correctional settings and face elevated risks inside. A 2014 analysis of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey found that 47 percent of previously incarcerated transgender women reported harassment or assault by inmates or staff, and 25 percent reported being denied healthcare. Most facilities have historically assigned housing based on sex assigned at birth. The federal Prison Rape Elimination Act requires case-by-case housing decisions and twice-yearly reassessments, but as of 2020 only 21 states and the District of Columbia were fully compliant with PREA standards.³³ California’s Senate Bill 132, effective in 2021, permits incarcerated transgender individuals to request housing consistent with their gender identity based on self-identification.³⁴ Courts remain split on the constitutional obligation to provide gender-affirming healthcare in prison.

Women Working Inside the System

Women remain a minority in nearly every criminal justice profession. They make up about 13.8 percent of sworn law enforcement officers as of 2023; the 30×30 Initiative, which hundreds of agencies have signed on to, aims to raise women’s representation in police academy classes to 30 percent by 2030.³⁵³⁶ Women account for about 28 percent of correctional officers and jailers, though their share drops in leadership: 17 percent of first-line supervisors, 13 percent of mid-level management, and 10 percent of top jail administrators. Female correctional officers earn an average of $56,136 compared to $67,907 for their male counterparts.³⁷³⁸

The judiciary has seen the sharpest change. As of 2024, 33 percent of federal Article III judges were women, up from just 5 percent in 1980; 63 percent of the Biden administration’s 200 confirmed federal judges were women, compared to 42 percent under Obama and 24 percent under Trump.³⁹ On state supreme courts, women hold 43 percent of seats, and 20 states have female majorities on their high courts.⁴⁰

1
The Sentencing Project. Incarcerated Women and Girls
2
Prison Policy Initiative. Women’s Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie
3
United States Sentencing Commission. Quick Facts: Federally Sentenced Women
4
Council on Criminal Justice. Number of Women in the Justice System Projected to Reach 1.1 Million by 2035
5
Annual Reviews. Women’s Incarceration in the United States
6
Vera Institute of Justice. Incarceration Trends
7
Council on Criminal Justice. Racial Disparities – Female Brief
8
United States Sentencing Commission. Demographic Differences in Federal Sentencing
9
Council on Criminal Justice. Women’s Justice: A Preliminary Assessment
10
National Library of Medicine. Pathways to Crime for Women
11
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Reproductive Health Care for Incarcerated Individuals
12
Prison Policy Initiative. New Research on Pregnancy in Prisons and Jails
13
Government Accountability Office. Incarcerated Pregnant Women
14
National Library of Medicine. Anti-Shackling Legislation Compliance
15
ACLU of North Carolina. First Step Act: A Small Step for Incarcerated Women
16
Stateline. How Prisons Allow Mothers and Infants to Nest for Months
17
National Library of Medicine. Prison Nursery Programs
18
American Bar Association. Hidden Collateral Damage: Incarcerating Mothers
19
The Sentencing Project. Parents in Prison
20
Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. Effects of Parental Incarceration on Young Children
21
Prison Policy Initiative. How the Adoption and Safe Families Act Has Hurt Incarcerated Parents
22
Yale Law School. Incarcerated Parents and Termination of Parental Rights in Connecticut
23
R Street Institute. Confronting the Women’s Incarceration Crisis: Reentry and Long-Term Success
24
UC Berkeley School of Law. A Higher Hurdle
25
Office of Justice Programs. Gender-Responsive Programs for Incarcerated Women
26
Urban Institute. Gender-Responsive Programming in Women’s Prisons
27
Right on Crime. Alternative Sentencing and Diversion in Oklahoma
28
The Urbanic Law Firm. State Court Diversion Programs
29
Council on Criminal Justice. Advancing Women’s Justice: What We Should Know, But Don’t
30
U.S. Congress. H.R.8976 – Women in Criminal Justice Reform Act
31
Office of Rep. Kamlager-Dove. Kamlager-Dove Reintroduces Women in Criminal Justice Reform Act
32
Center for Effective Public Policy. Women’s Justice Commission: Advancing Gender-Responsive Reform
33
Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law. Housing and Treatment of Transgender Incarcerated Persons
34
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. SB 132 FAQs
35
Statista. Gender Distribution of Full-Time Law Enforcement Employees
36
National Policing Institute. Women in Policing
37
Data USA. Correctional Officers and Jailers
38
Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Women in Corrections
39
American Bar Association. Judges
40
Brennan Center for Justice. State Supreme Court Diversity