Major report on women in prison

As detailed in this AP article, a new report from the Women's Prison Association provides a "comprehensive state-by-state breakdown of the huge increase in incarceration of women over the past 30 years."  As the article explains, this new "report concurred with previous analyses attributing much of the nationwide increase in women's imprisonment to the war on drugs."

The WPA's report is entitled "Hard Hit: The Growth in the Imprisonment of Women 1977-2004" and it can be accessed at this link.  The Foreword to the report provides an overview and key findings:

Over the past three decades, as the United States has experienced explosive prison growth, women have been hard hit.  Although women have the dubious distinction of being the fastest growing segment of the prison population, scant attention has been paid to their involvement in the criminal justice system.  Indeed, even most official sources of criminal justice data do not distinguish between men and women in their analyses, leaving it only to speculation on whether there are any distinctions between the two groups that make a difference.

HARD HIT: The Growth in the Imprisonment of Women, 1977 - 2004 is the first study of its kind, analyzing the striking growth in the numbers of women in prison, state-by-state over nearly three decades.  The report provides context to the alarming growth trends and reviews what is understood about the phenomena by researchers who study women in the criminal justice system....

Key Findings:

• Across the board, the growth has been dramatic....
• Tremendous state and regional variances exist....
• At the beginning of this century, interesting shifts occur....
• Women, families, and communities are devastated by imprisonment.