According to this University professor, we should.
Quote: "Essentially, the case for closing women’s prisons is the same as the case for imprisoning fewer men. It is the case against the prison industrial complex and for community-based treatment where it works better than incarceration. But there is evidence that prison harms women more than men, so why not start there?
Any examination of the women who are in U.S. prisons reveals that the majority are nonviolent offenders with poor education, little employment experience and multiple histories of abuse from childhood through adulthood. Women are also more likely than men to have children who rely on them for support — 147,000 American children have mothers in prison."
Quote:"So what is the alternative to jailing women at the rate we do? In Britain, advocates propose community sentences for nonviolent offenders and housing violent offenders in small custodial centers near their families.
There is evidence that these approaches can work in the United States. Opportunities to test alternatives to prison are increasing across the states, and some have demonstrated beneficial results for the women who participated.
For example, state-funded Project Redeploy in Illinois has built upon the evidence that nonviolent offenders are more effectively treated in their communities by diverting 1,376 nonviolent offenders from prison since January 2011, when the program began, through the end of 2013."
Full Article Here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/postev...-for-anything/
What do y'all think?
Hell no.