For Immediate Release: December 2, 2016
Black women are three times more likely to be incarcerated than white women; Latina women are 69% more likely than white women to be incarcerated. Girls and young women also make up an increasing large proportion of the juvenile justice population, with Black and Native young women significantly more likely than white young women to be detained. Of girls in detention, 40% identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or gender nonconforming.
Solutions:
– Work to ensure that all incarcerated people can stay connected to their families
– Increase in pay to minimum wage for all people incarcerated at Bureau of Prisons facilities
– Improve access to education for currently and formerly incarcerated people
– Improve access to health care for currently and formerly incarcerated women
– End restrictions on the federal Bureau of Prison’s ability to cover the cost of abortion except in severely limited circumstances.
– Provide access to physical, mental, and reproductive healthcare, including sexual health care, on demand to all incarcerated people
– Ban the shackling of pregnant women in all federal incarceration and detention facilities
– Continue reform of the juvenile justice system
– Removal the 5,400 young people currently detained adult facilities and identifying the least restrictive available juvenile facility for placement
– Increase funding for and disseminating best practices on the treatment of LGBTQ youth in delinquency programs and detention facilities
– Eliminate the use of private prisons at all levels of the immigration system.