ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes trends in women's involvement in criminal activities, then reviews arrest, judicial, and prison statistics and examines the changes, if any, that have occurred vis-vis women's socioeconomic status. The judicial statistics from the states of California, Pennsylvania, and New York confirm this pattern of an increase in the percentage of women charged with and convicted of property crimes. The American prison system has been a target of the equal rights movement, because, by and large, it continues to provide separate facilities for men and women. The size of the female prison population also affects the heterogeneity of the populations within women's prisons. Women's prisons contain a heterogeneous population than do prisons for men. Physically, then, female institutions are usually attractive and pleasant than the security-oriented institutions for men. Child visitation is even more problematic in the federal system than it is in the state system, because there are few facilities to serve the population of federal female offenders.
