Women, Substance Use and Incarceration in Massachusetts: A Fact Sheet (scroll down for details)
Women, Incarceration, and Violent Crime: A Briefing in Response to Plans for Building a New Women’s Prison in Massachusetts View PDF
The population of women incarcerated for crimes labeled as violent has emerged as a sticking point in efforts to balance concerns for public safety with the rights and well-being of women and communities most impacted by pro-incarceration policies of the late 20th and 21st centuries. To explore whether these concerns are grounded in the facts, we prepared a briefing that presents an overview of the scholarly literature on women, violence, and crime as well as stories of real women who have been incarcerated for crimes classified as violent in Massachusetts.
Key Points
● Classification of acts into “violent” and “non-violent” is inconsistent in American law and practice, and has problematic racial and gender implications.
● Women have very low rates of arrests and convictions for violent crimes.
● Women are more likely to be victims than perpetrators of violent crimes.
● Women who commit violent crimes usually do so in the context of household or intimate partner abuse.
● Women released from prison after serving time for violent crimes are unlikely to commit a subsequent violent crime.
Women, Substance Use and Incarceration in Massachusetts: A Fact Sheet View PDF
Key Points
- A majority of incarcerated women grapple with substance use. Drug-related arrests of women nationally increased 216% over the past decade, compared to a 48% increase for men (Herring, 2020). Massachusetts, like many other states, continues to criminalize use of certain pain-reducing and mood-altering substances such as heroin and cocaine.
- Women utilize more health care services, including medication than men, and women receive more prescription medications and purchase more over-the-counter medicines than men (Orlando et al., 2020). This is particularly true of psychotherapeutic medications and opioids.
- Incarcerated women nationally report substantially higher rates of use of both licit and illicit psychiatric and pain medication than either men or non-incarcerated women (Nowotny et al., 2014; see also Houser & Belenko, 2015).
- The number of states with policies that punish women for substance use during pregnancy has more than doubled since the year 2000.
- Women who use drugs or alcohol may be stigmatized or punished for deviating from normative feminine behavior.
- There is no evidence that prison-based treatment or coerced drug treatment is effective for women (Werb et al., 2016; Sered et al., 2021).
- Drug overdose is the leading cause of death after release from prison, and the risk of fatal overdose is significantly higher among women compared to men (Evans & Sullivan, 2015).