John,

Research on female incarceration is critical to understanding the full consequences of mass incarceration and to unraveling the policies and practices that lead to their criminalization. Today, The Sentencing Project released an updated report documenting over a 600% increase in women’s imprisonment in the United States between 1980 and 2023.

While more men are imprisoned than women, the rate of growth for female incarceration is twice as high as that of men since 1980. As of 2023, over one million women are under the supervision of the criminal legal system.

The report’s additional highlights:

The imprisonment rate for Black women was 1.7 times the rate of imprisonment for white women.
Latina women were imprisoned at 1.2 times the rate of white women.
Idaho has the highest rate of incarcerated women, almost three times greater than the national average.
Over 60% of imprisoned women in state prisons have a child under the age of 18.
The proportion of arrested youth that are girls has grown over time from 19% in 1985 to 31% in 2024.
Native and Black girls are much more likely to be incarcerated than white, Latina, or Asian girls.
26% of incarcerated girls are held for status offenses, such as truancy and curfew violations, or for violating the terms of their probation.