New Report: 60% of Female Inmates Jailed for Non-Violent Crimes

By teleSUR

24 October 17

"It feels like I am sitting on death row," inmate Alice Marie Johnson said. "Unless things change, I will never go home alive."

n 1996, Alice Marie Johnson was sentenced by a jury to life without parole on non-violent drug conspiracy charges. On Oct. 31, the 62-year-old great-grandmother will have served 21 years behind bars at the Aliceville Correctional Institution in Aliceville, Alabama.

But she is just one of 3,278 inmates serving life sentences, without parole, for committing non-violent crimes. Nearly 79 percent of the total prison population serving life sentences were convicted of similar crimes, of which 65 percent are Black.

"Please wake up, America, and help end this injustice," pleaded Johnson during a video chat with Mic.com. "It’s time to stop over-incarcerating your own citizens, because that is what is going on. It feels like I am sitting on death row. Unless things change, I will never go home alive."

A new report, "Whole Pie: Mass Incarceration 2017," that came out Friday, shines a light on the issue. Part of the report, "Women’s Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2017," specifically concentrates on incarcerated women.

The report, in collaboration with ACLU’s Campaign for Smart Justice, took into account 219,000 women in the justice system. This figure represents 16 percent of the total, with 84 percent of those on probation, including 9 percent on parole.

Of the 96,000 women currently being held in jail, 58,000, a staggering 60 percent, are still awaiting trial. And the vast majority of those women lack adequate funds to make bail, with the typical cost being about US$10,000. The annual median income for incarcerated women is US$11,071, with Black women earning on average just US$9,083.

The report comes on the heels of several senators introducing a Sentencing Reform Bill in early October. The bill, called "The bipartisan Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2017," focuses on mandatory minimum sentences.

It aims to "recalibrate prison sentences for non-violent drug offenders, target violent and career criminals, and save taxpayer dollars," Chuck Grassley, one of the senators, said in a statement. The bill was designed to "help inmates successfully re-enter society, while tightening penalties for violent criminals and preserving key prosecutorial tools for law enforcement."

The U.S. has the highest incarceration rates in the world owing to its high number of minimum mandatory sentences. In the statement, another senator, Cory Booker, said: "The mass incarceration explosion of the last 40 years has ... disproportionately affected communities of color and the poor and devalued the very idea of justice in America."

"Jail churn is particularly high because most people in jails have not been convicted," said the report's authors. "The system funnels women into jails: About a quarter of convicted incarcerated women are held in jails, compared to about 10% of all people incarcerated with a conviction."

While the report provided few details based on ethnicity or race, it did note that "incarcerated women are 53 percent White, 28.6 percent Black, 14.2 percent Hispanic, 2.5 percent American Indian and Alaskan Native, 0.9 percent Asian, and 0.4 percent Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander."