Vengeful Equity

Want to read the rest of this paper? Join Essayworld today to view this entire essay and over 50,000 other term papers

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 ...

Get instant access to over 50,000 essays. Write better papers. Get better grades. Already a member? Login

The state this lawsuit was brought against was Alabama. They then created a women's chain gang to eliminate the lawsuits. Chesney-Lind seemed to think this ridiculous. I believe it was the right choice by the state. Women do not need to match the work of the male inmate, but must do similar work in their own capacity, for example women should not be required to lift the same amount of weight, but should be required to exert comparable amounts of physical energy. Physical abuse and early childhood abuse were debated by Chesney-Lind as a difference that is taken into consideration when comparing male versus female incarceration. According to her article, 43 percent of women surveyed ...

Succeed in your coursework without stepping into a library. Get access to a growing library of notes, book reports, and research papers in 2 minutes or less.

CITE THIS PAGE: