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1 December 2009
Breaking the Cycle: Calming the Cries through Alternatives
An emergency is at hand. The lights are flashing red and blue, the cries ring out, and women are ripped from their homes at alarming rates, leaving children motherless. The statistics are staggering; the Institute on Women & Criminal Justice reports that the past three decades has seen an explosion in female incarceration rates, growing 832% from 1977 to 2007 with an astounding 4% of women in state prisons and 3% of women in federal prisons pregnant at the time of admittance (Women’s Prison Association 4). Lives are at stake. Every court decision, every judgment cast, effects more than just the individual involved. The future is dependent on how society treats the present. In order to combat the crisis, it is vital to understand its origins and its impact; from this understanding, alternatives that consider the health and well being of all involved can be formulated and delivered. The United States has less than 5% of the world’s population, but boasts the overwhelming figure of almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners (Liptak 1). With nearly 2.3 million bars, one in 100 American adults is locked up. “Criminologists and legal experts here and abroad point to a tangle of factors to explain America's extraordinary incarceration rate: higher levels of violent crime, harsher sentencing laws, a legacy of racial turmoil, a special fervor in combating illegal drugs, the American temperament, and the lack of a social safety net” (Liptak 1). Another crucial point is that U.S. sentences are longer and more harsh than the rest of the industrialized world. This is devastatingly true, especially in regards to the drug war. The shocking rise in the feminization of the U.S. prison system is linked to the punishments for non-violent offenses. The Women’s