Women in prison….and immigration?

A brief A.P. story reports on the fact that women are making up a growing percentage of the inmate population of state and federal prisons, and that women now account for almost 1 in 4 arrests.  The story is here.   The detention figures include immigration detention facilities as well as other prisons and jails.

These numbers raise the question (for which I have no answers) of the degree to which the growing focus on criminal immigration prosecutions, not to mention the routine mandatory detention of removable noncitizens, is contributing to the feminization of the nation’s inmate population.

-jmc