Women and Girls in the Criminal Justice System

From the National Criminal Justice Reference Service comes this new resource:
Women and Girls in the Criminal Justice System

From the Summary:
"According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) publication, Prisoners in 2004, collected from the National Prisoner Statistics, which obtains yearend and midyear counts of prisoners from departments of corrections in each of the 50 States and the Federal Bureau of Prisons, at yearend 2002, there were 26,300 female prisoners incarcerated in State prison for a violent offense. Violent offenders accounted for 33% of the female prison population under State jurisdiction at yearend 2002 (Prisoners in 2004, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2005).

The growth in the female offender population can be seen in each component of corrections. As of June 30, 2004, the number of women under State or Federal jurisdiction was 103,910, a 2.9% increase from June 30, 2003. At the same time, there were an estimated 86,999 female jail inmates, about 12.3% of the jail population. Overall, about 8.6 % of persons incarcerated in prison and jail were women (Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2004, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2005). "