Coverage of new gendered sentencing realities

The St. Petersburg Times has this interesting piece entitled, "Another case of shrinking the gender gap: prison; programs aren't always in place to help the growing population of female inmates.  Here's a snippet:

While the number of men and women in Florida’s general population increased at similar rates from 1977 to 2005, the population of women in prison grew 600 percent, compared to 345 percent for men....  A new crop of female prisoners has correction officials scrambling to adjust to women's needs.  But a lack of funding and a sparsity of gender-specific prison programs nationwide has proved to be an obstacle.

Over the past six years, the Florida Department of Corrections has seen its programming budget, which includes prison programs for both men and women, decrease from $59-million during fiscal year 2000-01 to $42-million during fiscal year 2004-05. In Florida, the programs that do exist are rooted in gender stereotypes.  The state's women's prisons offer cosmetology and fashion design classes. Men's prisons offer carpentry or construction classes.