Vengeful Equity
Vengeful EquityBy: Joshua Chiarella
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This paper will address the issues surrounding the criminal incarceration of women in American society through the discussion of the views of Meda Chesney-Lind in her 1997 paper "Vengeful Equity: Sentencing Women to Prison." It will present critical reasons of incarceration dealing with the onset of the "Rockefeller Laws," problems with translation, and results. In the paper I will also present solutions of Chesney-Lind as well as my own opinion for possible options other then common prison sentencing as it is practiced today. The United States in recent times has seen the sudden rise of females in our prison systems. This is most solely due to the introduction of the Rockefeller Laws and its guidelines of mandatory minimum sentencing of criminals for specified crimes. The law was designed to reduce bias in the ever volatile world of race relations and eliminate harsher sentencing for equal crimes based on color. In the female world, consideration of possible mitigating circumstances surrounding an individuals' crime has been taken away from the presiding judge's discretion. Important factors are not allowed to enter in the decision process such as why the crime was committed and by who. While the number of women behind bars has risen as of late, the number of violent offenders in these prisons has actually fallen quite drastically. The proportion of women in state prisons for violent offences declined from 48.9 percent in 1979 to 32.2 percent in 1991 (Chensey-Lind 1997). That would leave the remainder of the near tripling of incarcerated women since the 1980's as nonviolent offenders. Some of these women are imprisoned for property crimes, such as stealing for their drug habit, or often these women have been busted for drug trafficking, often referred to as drug mules (individuals caught moving drugs for someone else). Because of the mandatory minimums, the courts can no longer take into consideration the reasons the offenders committed their crime and level sentences more appropriate such as probation with supervised counseling. Their hands are tied to levy mandatory sentences for even first time offenders. Most of the time, much too harsh for the crime, the perpetrator becomes the victim of the court and its attempt to fight the war on drugs. As they stand now, women incarcerated are not having their needs met in regards to having their problems, often responsible for incarceration, addressed by the system. For the most part, limited funds are given by the government to fund the programs addressing these issues, whether they be drug addiction clinics within the walls, or therapy to help women avoid destructive relationships. Chesney-Lind states that every dollar spent locking up women could be better spent on services that would prevent women from resorting to crime. Thus, without the proper attention to these issues, a large portion of the inmates will most likely return to their old lifestyle and ultimately return to the prison system to be failed again. Issues of gender differences in prisons from their...
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