Increases in female jail and prison populations warrant changes, ACLU says

“Women in the Criminal Justice System: Pathways to Incarceration in Virginia,” a 90-page report released Thursday by the ACLU of Virginia, suggests there may be gender-specific issues not being considered by current legislative and policy efforts to reduce the state’s prison and jail populations.

The American Civil Liberties Union says that from 1980 to 2015, the number of female inmates in Virginia prisons rose from 303 to 3,123 — a 930 percent increase. During the same 35-year period, the male population grew 308 percent, from 8,617 to 35,167.

Nationally, the number of female prison and jail inmates rose from 26,378 in 1980 to 210,291 in 2015, according to The Sentencing Project, a Washington-based research and advocacy group.

The most recent figures available from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics show that the number of female Virginia prison inmates fell 3.9 percent from the end of 2015 to the end of 2016, from 3,236 to 3,109, outpacing the male inmate decline of 1.3 percent. The ACLU said, however, that could be a one-time phenomenon and not necessarily the start of a trend.

Women who are locked up tend to be poor, young and unmarried, according to the report. More than half of the women in U.S. prisons and 80 percent in jails are mothers, most of them the sole or primary caregiver to children before their incarceration. Also, compared with males, a disproportionate number of women behind bars have histories of mental health problems.

Three out of four crimes for which women are locked up in Virginia — drug possession and distribution, larceny and shoplifting — are often committed to support drug dependencies, according to the ACLU.

The ACLU says that the most recent national data available indicate that women receive greater leniency than men in pretrial custody decisions. However, if a judge denies bail, women, particularly mothers, can be under great pressure to agree to plea deals so as not to lose jobs, housing or custody of children.

The report urges that a committee, task force or work groups — to include indigent defense lawyers, sheriffs, drug addiction recovery experts, prosecutors, the Virginia Criminal Sentencing Commission and others — be convened by the governor or the General Assembly to study the ways women wind up in the criminal justice system and behind bars.

Other recommendations include increasing the felony theft threshold to at least $1,500; establishing eligibility for criminal record expungement; expanding eligibility and increasing resources for pretrial diversion programs; and increasing funding for alternative sentencing and community-based treatment programs.