Why So Many Black Women Are Behind Bars
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson, AlterNet
Some years ago I briefly worked as a social worker. Occasionally I would visit clients in jail to determine their eligibility for continued benefits. They were all men — with one exception. She was a young black woman serving time for theft. She had two small children.
She entered the visiting room handcuffed to another woman and dressed in drab prison garb. We talked through a reinforced glass window. The guards stared hard and barked out gruff commands to the women.
The idea of a woman in prison then was a novelty. It isn’t anymore. According to a recent Justice Department report on America’s jail population, women make up about 10 percent of the America’s inmates.
There are now more women than ever serving time, and black women make up a disproportionate number of those women.
They are twice more likely than Hispanic, and over three times more likely than white women, to be jailed.
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