Sunday, May 9, 2010

Number of women going to federal prison jumps 50 per cent

Quite a Mothers' Day story:

http://tinyurl.com/2g9y6yd


Sunday, May 9, 2010

By Laura Stone, Canwest News Service

OTTAWA — The number of women starting federal prison sentences in Canada has grown by more than 50 per cent in the past decade — a "troubling trend" that experts say will only get worse as the Conservative government moves toward harsher laws and order measures.

Most concerning, they say, is that the small pool of incarcerated women share many common traits: They are primarily poor or homeless, undereducated and have addictions or mental-health problems such as schizophrenia, depression and anxiety disorders.

Almost all of them — 82 per cent, according to advocacy group Elizabeth Fry Society — have a history of sexual or physical abuse. That figure rises to 91 per cent for aboriginal women.

4 comments:

JoanR20 said...

It would be interesting to know the rate of increase in the past four years, since programs for women and the court challenge program have been scrapped. This is no surprise to me, and, I suspect, anyone with knowledge of the social struggles in the inner cities in this country. Jails are probably the most expensive institutions in which to address our problems in society but Harper has convinced many Canadians that he is somehow keeping families safe with his stupid, ideological policies. The social costs and costs to the affected individuals are incalculable, but then he is apparently only interested in keeping families in his neighborhood "safe" and spreading the costs to everyone, especially the most vulnerable.

James C Morton said...

good point -- let me look for those numbers

penlan said...

Please post those numbers, James when/if you find them.

Anonymous said...

Based on a jump of 50% in ten years that amounts to 167 more inmates. When you factor in the growth of population in general over that time it means there are an extra 120 female prisoners nationwide in federal prisons over what would be expected.

A quick possible answer may be that longer sentences has led to more woman being put in federal prisons.

The article does suggest that a cut to health care was part of the problem. Will anyone blame Chretien for this?

Considering the huge numbers of abused women in this country as claimed by Ignatieff last year (I believe he claimed it was as high as a third) it is remarkable that so few women are incarcerated.