Number of Women in Prison on the Rise
From Times Wire Reports
Women made up 7% of all inmates in state and federal prisons last year and accounted for nearly one in four arrests, the government reported.
The number of women incarcerated in state and federal prisons in 2004 was up 4% compared with 2003, more than double the 1.8% increase among men, the study said.
A coauthor of a Bureau of Justice Statistics report, Paige Harrison, attributed some of the rise to tougher sentencing policies started in the late 1990s.
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