Women in Prison: The Hidden Crisis in America’s Carceral System

Women in prison move through a system that was never built for them. Their needs, potential, and support vanish inside institutions designed around men. The result is a network of policies that punish women for the conditions they were often born into and the harm they have survived.

Most correctional systems and reform initiatives treat men as the standard. At first glance, this appears logical, since men make up roughly 90% of the nation’s incarcerated population. However, the number of women in prison has grown disproportionately in recent years, and this trend—seen both nationally and globally—has remained largely absent from public debate and policy design.

A woman’s incarceration rarely operates as an isolated event. It reshapes families, neighborhoods, and local economies. In this article, we will lay out the evidence that women now sit at the center of some of the justice system’s deepest failures, and the reforms required to change them.

The Scope of Women’s Incarceration

The United States has experienced a surge in women’s incarceration over the last four decades. Between 1980 and 2023, the number of incarcerated women increased by over 600%. This transformation reflects policy choices rather than a spike in crime waves. Legislative priorities expanded sentences for drug-related offenses, revoked discretion in sentencing, and limited alternatives for low-level violations.

The United States incarcerates women at the highest rate in the world. Women account for 15% of the local jail population and roughly 8-9% of the state prison population. The country continues to imprison women rapidly, often for short terms in facilities with limited programming, limited treatment, and limited oversight. The system holds approximately 190,600 women and girls across state and federal prisons, jails, juvenile facilities, and immigration facilities.

The rate of growth continues to accelerate. Since 2020, women’s incarceration has climbed faster than men’s, with jail rates rising by 33% for women when compared to 17% for men. The trend indicates growing reliance on confinement as a response to social and economic instability. 

More than ever, women in prison are younger, poorer, and more likely to support children. More than men, women carry the responsibilities of caregivers, enter facilities with chronic health conditions, and leave facilities with records that block access to housing and work.

Who Are Incarcerated Women?

The demographics of women in prison reveal persistent patterns of inequality. Black women face an imprisonment rate roughly 1.7 times the rate for white women. These disparities appear even earlier in life. Black youth make up 14% of the U.S. population under eighteen, yet they account for 39% of girls held in juvenile facilities.

The pathways into prison vary, but the majority of women enter the system through low-level offenses related to addiction, poverty, or survival. When compared to crime rates of these kinds of offenses, studies have found that women are more likely than men to be incarcerated in state prisons. 

These charges reflect broader economic conditions. Before entering prison, many women earned low wages, worked in unstable jobs, or relied on informal work while supporting families, circumstances that led to arrest and incarceration. Many experienced eviction, food insecurity, or homelessness before their sentences; formerly incarcerated women face homelessness at rates 35% higher than men, reflecting long-standing instability that precedes their criminal charges.

The system classifies women by offense, yet the context behind those offenses remains absent. Women who stole often did so to meet basic needs in the face of poverty and resource scarcity. Those who sold drugs frequently did so under economic pressure or the coercion of intimate partners, conditions documented across multiple longitudinal studies. Women who used drugs often relied on substances to manage untreated trauma, including childhood abuse, interpersonal violence, and chronic stress.

Women in prison live at the intersection of poverty, violence, and gender-based expectations. Their experiences reveal the limits of punitive policy in addressing social harm. Criminalization becomes a mechanism for managing conditions that social services failed to resolve, a pattern noted across studies on the treatment of justice-involved women.

The Gendered Inequities in Programming, Education, and Resources

Educational programs inside women’s facilities mirror broader inequities. Only half of the women in prison participate in academic or vocational programming. One in five takes high school or GED classes. Less than one in three participates in vocational programs. The problem begins with access: Many women serve short sentences that complicate enrollment. Others live in facilities that lack basic classroom space or teaching staff.

Some systems exclude women from programs due to housing status, disciplinary record, or mental health conditions. Facility leaders often describe small female populations as justification for fewer programs—the logic positions education as a privilege rather than a public responsibility.

The disparities extend beyond access. In one state, women’s college programs were established ten years after similar programs were launched in male facilities. The lag represents more than a delay. It shapes the opportunities that women carry into reentry.

The structure of education in prison reflects broader assumptions about what women can accomplish. Low enrollment justifies underinvestment, underinvestment reinforces low enrollment, and women encounter a closed loop where ambition collides with infrastructure.

Some facilities attempt to expand offerings, but efforts often struggle to overcome structural barriers. Classrooms lack digital tools—schedules conflict with mandated labor. Security protocols limit access to technology. Women attend school while navigating trauma, court hearings, and the demands of incarceration.

Vocational Training In Prison Is Prioritized For Men

Vocational programs for women in prison reflect assumptions about gender and labor. In Mississippi, the five vocational options available to women include cosmetology and upholstery. Men have access to thirteen possibilities, including air conditioning, diesel mechanics, plumbing, welding, and industrial electricity.

The difference signals an expectation about women’s economic future. Programs cluster around low-wage fields with limited mobility and low demand. Many women exit prison with skills that do not pay for childcare, housing, or healthcare. 

Scale drives many of the inequities in vocational training. Colleges developing prison programs often project cohorts of 25 men but only five women—a disparity that creates an economic disincentive to offer high-quality courses in women’s facilities. Because women make up a smaller proportion of the prison population and typically serve shorter sentences, departments of corrections frequently justify offering only the most limited programs. 

The result is a national pattern, documented by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, of prison systems providing lower-level and highly gendered programming to women, even when men’s facilities in the same state offer advanced certifications, apprenticeships, and degree pathways.

The result is a layered inequity. The system funnels women into occupations with lower pay, lower demand, and lower prestige. It prepares women to survive rather than advance. It repeats patterns of exclusion that already shaped their lives before incarceration.

The Economic Case for Change

 The data clearly shows that investing in correctional education leads to measurable outcomes. Prison residents who engage in educational programs have a 43% lower likelihood of returning to prison, resulting in a 13-point decrease in recidivism rates. Reduced recidivism translates into systemic savings. Every dollar invested in education reduces incarceration costs by $4 to $5 during the first three years after release.

The economic argument extends to employment. Individuals who completed vocational training were 28% more likely to find work after release. With higher employment, benefits abound on a societal scale: a stronger labor market lowers the cost of public assistance, raises tax revenue, and stabilizes families. 

Despite this, many systems treat education as supplementary. Instead of expanding classrooms and programming, most budgets are built to expand facilities and staff positions. Instead of having a rehabilitative standard across the country, education in prison becomes a function of geography, politics, and administrative priorities.Unfortunately, Women’s facilities receive far fewer programs (proven to reduce recidivism) than extensive, high-security men’s facilities. National data show that when women do receive programming, their outcomes improve: formerly incarcerated women who participated in vocational or educational training were more likely to secure employment after release, a key predictor of long-term stability. Yet women leave prison facing higher unemployment rates than their male counterparts and significantly lower post-release earnings, reflecting both gendered labor-market discrimination and limited access to high-wage training inside prison.

The cost of this underinvestment extends beyond individual outcomes. Most women in prison are mothers and primary caregivers. Their unemployment and instability after release contribute to cycles of poverty, foster-care placement, and long-term family separation—conditions that deepen the likelihood of future justice involvement for their children.

Motherhood and Family Separation

Motherhood remains central to the experience of women in prison. 58% percent of women in state prisons are mothers to minor children. Most lived with their children before incarceration. Removal from the home disrupts family structures and places children in unstable environments.

The vast majority of these mothers functioned as primary caregivers. Mothers in custody are 3 times more likely to head single-parent households than incarcerated men. Mothers are 5 times more likely to report children in foster care than fathers. 

To add to the separation, many women are housed far from their children. Over 70% of incarcerated women are held more than 100 miles from their homes. Distance impedes visitation. Transportation costs, time demands, and childcare needs limit regular contact. The average sentence for women in prison is 18 months. A sentence of that length can result in termination of parental rights under federal timelines, further increase instability, and create long-term risks of generational cycles of incarceration.

The Last Mile’s Expansion to Women’s Facilities

The Last Mile (TLM) entered women’s prisons at a time when most operated without programs that could lead to high-wage careers. Fifteen years ago, TLM began in the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center to provide incarcerated people with industry-aligned technology training. In the last decade, TLM has expanded nationwide, bringing its model into women’s facilities that had never offered comparable opportunities. In 2018, TLM launched its first out-of-state program at the Indiana Women’s Prison, the first of multiple expansions into states across the country.

Recent expansions introduced classrooms equipped with laptops, remote instructors, and a curriculum designed to meet labor-market demand—conditions rarely available to women in custody. Students are learning digital literacy, coding, project management, and audio/video engineering, building the technical skills required in modern workplaces. For many facilities, TLM is the first program that prepares women for careers beyond gendered, low-wage fields.

TLM’s involvement showed that the issue with advanced programming in women’s prisons was not due to a lack of ability or talent, but rather a matter of priorities. By focusing on women within a high-skill training model, TLM altered the expectations surrounding educational access in women’s prisons and determined who should benefit from such opportunities.

A Pathway Created Where None Existed – Mikayla Munn’s Story

Mikayla Munn’s experience reflects many of the patterns described throughout this article: trauma before incarceration, unstable mental health support, and limited opportunities for women inside prison. Before her transfer to the Indiana Women’s Prison, she spent 8 months in county jail, in solitary confinement, solely because the facility had not approved her medications for PTSD. She received no therapy or services during that time and considers the county to be the most challenging experience of her life. 

In the first years of incarceration, lack of meaningful programming shaped Mikayla’s daily routine. “There weren’t a lot of programs,” Mikayla recalled. “They were constantly shifting, and there was nothing really to do that helped your future. It was an old building… plain walls, plain rooms.” She said it was nearly impossible to plan for reentry or build skills that could support stability outside. For many women, this instability reflects the everyday reality of incarceration.

The Last Mile marked a significant change for Mikayla. She saw it as a chance to build something she could depend on once she returned home. “Being able to be a part of something helpful and meaningful was important,” she said. “I was constantly told that I can do this, and I have the credentials.” 

For Mikayla, a visit from a formerly incarcerated alum made the possibility of a different future tangible. “When she talked about what she was doing on the outside, it solidified that anybody can do this as long as they put their mind to it,” she told us. “She sat in our same seats. She did the same things we did.” Today, Mikayla serves as Program Operations Manager at TLM.

Gender-Responsive Reform and the Policies That Must Follow

The evidence is unmistakable: systems that support women must be designed around women’s lives. Gender-responsive approaches recognize the conditions that shape women’s pathways into prison—trauma, caregiving responsibilities, economic dependence, coercive relationships, and chronic instability.

Research shows that programs built around these realities achieve measurable reductions in recidivism. Yet most states still rely on tools and programs developed initially for men. Only 37% use gender-responsive risk and needs assessments, despite growing evidence that assessments designed for male populations misclassify women and fail to identify their actual support needs.

Reform requires actionable steps. Systems must expand access to high-wage, non-gendered education, vocational training, and in-prison employment opportunities. Programs like The Last Mile demonstrate that rigorous technical instruction not only thrives inside women’s facilities but also produces strong employment outcomes and significantly lower recidivism. All states should adopt gender-responsive assessment tools, integrate trauma-informed care into core operations, and ensure that programming is not restricted by sentence length or facility classification.

Because most incarcerated women are mothers, policies must also address family stability. Expanding visitation, reducing the facility-to-home distance, and reevaluating the timelines for parental rights termination are essential to disrupting intergenerational harm. Building a justice system that works for women will massively reduce generational cycles of incarceration, and the data show that a system like this is overdue.

You Can Help Women In Prison

Women’s incarceration remains one of the least examined failures of the American justice system. The data in this report make the pattern obvious: women enter prison with higher rates of trauma, lower access to healthcare, fewer educational opportunities, and deeper family responsibilities.

They encounter institutions that were never designed for them and policies that treat their needs as peripheral. When programming does appear, it is too often limited, gendered, or unstable. The consequences extend far beyond prison walls—into homes, classrooms, workplaces, and entire generations of children are in the balance.

In this article, we have shown that women’s outcomes are not fixed. When women are given real pathways—programs that challenge them, equip them, and affirm their capacity—the trajectory of their lives changes. We see this in the research and in the story of Mikayla Munn. 

The Last Mile has demonstrated that future-driven career education can operate inside women’s prisons and can produce graduates who stabilize families, contribute to local economies, and lead in their fields. Today, only a small fraction of women in custody have access to such programs. To expand these opportunities, we need political will, institutional partnerships, and public support. It requires acknowledging that the oppression of women in prison is the result of choices, and choices can undo it.

The work ahead of us is substantial, but it is essential and worthwhile. If we want a justice system that strengthens families and communities while reducing recidivism, we must invest in programs that already demonstrate these outcomes.

The Last Mile is committed to expanding access to women across the country. With the support of partners and readers like you, we can bring these opportunities to incarcerated women who are ready to build a better future.

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By Robert Roche, VP of Marketing at The Last Mile

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