Within three decades, the rate of women incarcerated in Texas prisons has increased more than 10 times. From 1977 to 2004 the amount of Total Female Sentenced Prisoners went from 919 women to 11,048 women, a 1,141 percent increase. Currently, Texas, ranked fifth, is one of the top ranking states in imprisonment of female offenders.
Annually, the percentage rate of women being incarcerated has been 13 percent, save for the year of 1992-1993 where the percentage was nearly tripled and stayed at a high percentage rate thereafter. However, the Women’s Prison Association Web site said:
Rather than a tripling of the state’s female prison population in the course of a single year, it is likely that the apparent jump is a result of years of undercounting—possibly of state prisoners housed in local jails due to a shortage of state prison beds.
In most cases, many of the charges these women are imprisoned for are drug related. Statistics show that women in prison are more likely than men to be serving a sentence for a drug charge.
