The Criminal Justice Systems War On Women

[sheshe2]

When we talk about the war on women, we often discuss it in terms of health care, reproductive rights and employment. Although these discussions are particularly relevant as the Trump administration and Republican controlled Congress work to repeal the Affordable Care Act and reverse Labor Department protections, they are not the only attacks being used to marginalize, restrict and punish women. They are just the most visible ones. What often goes unreported and frighteningly unnoticed is the war the administration is waging on women through the criminal justice system.

Women are the fastest growing population in prison. More than one million women are currently behind bars or under the control of the criminal justice system, and the rate of incarceration for women has been growing nearly twice as fast as that of men since 1985. The war on drugs is a primary reason for this drastic increase. Many women wind up involved in criminal acts as a result of drugs and their romantic entanglements with abusive partners, and they often pay hefty prices for this activity. Indeed, nearly 60 percent of women in federal prisons are there for drug convictions. These women often play small roles in a criminal enterprise, sometimes under significant duress, and rarely are involved in violence or have extensive prior convictions.

During the Obama administration, one of the Department of Justice’s signature initiatives was  Attorney General Eric Holder’s 2013  “Smart on Crime” plan. This initiative directed the Department’s prosecutors to “ensure that our most severe mandatory minimum penalties are reserved for serious, high-level, or violent drug traffickers,” and to avoid unduly harsh sentences where principles of justice demand it. Smart on Crime helped lead to the first consecutive drop in the federal prison population in more than three decades.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ May 2017 reversal of the Holder memo takes us back to overcrowded prisons, insufficient programming aimed at making reentry successful and more women unnecessarily incarcerated. Sessions’ memo directs all federal prosecutors to charge and pursue the most serious offenses possible for every defendant and to seek any possible mandatory minimum sentences.

It does not take a fortune teller to predict what damage will result to women from directing more than 5,000 Assistant United States Attorneys to charge defendants with the most serious crimes at their disposal. One only needs to have a memory and hear from women who experienced it.

More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-criminal-justice-system-is-part-of-the-war-on-women_us_596e4b6ae4b0a03aba855578?section=us_contributor

I keep asking myself why the GOP hates women so much.

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. That is a filthy, disgusting excuse for a human being. It enrages me to think that

little prick is in charge of anything, at all, to do with the law LET ALONE this.

But I am angrier at the people who could have PREVENTED all this even more.

[CrispyQ]

2. My outrage meter can't keep up.

It's draining.

[sheshe2]

4. I know how you feel, Eliot.

We know have a criminal making the most destructive laws of our land.

[smirkymonkey]

6. +1000

Exactly what you said! I hate that motherfucker with a white hot passion!

[Solly Mack]

3. K&R

[WhiteTara]

5. Here is a pithy reason by Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“Take the snake, the fruit-tree and the woman from the tableau, and we have no fall, nor frowning Judge, no Inferno, no everlasting punishment – hence no need of a Savior. Thus the bottom falls out of the whole Christian theology. Here is the reason why in all the Biblical researches and high criticisms, the scholars never touch the position of women.”[1]