ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on two other results of the parity movement: equal protection suits that have carried the issue of sex discrimination to the courts; and policy recommendations designed to help prison systems surmount the obstacles that, for two centuries, have encouraged unequal treatment by gender. Inferior treatment has been the rule for incarcerated women since the establishment of the first penitentiary. Women continue to be slighted by a correctional bureaucracy that is overwhelmingly male and preoccupied with the larger male population. By the early 1980s, incarcerated women were using the courts to address four primary issues: inadequate medical attention, parental rights, pregnancy care, and sex discrimination. Parity activists, together with corrections officials faced with equal protection litigation, have developed policy recommendations that would-if not eliminate-substantially reduce sex discrimination within penal systems. The economy of scale problem that prevents women's prisons from fielding as many programs as men's prisons can be alleviated through more reliance on community resources.
