This post is a shortened version of a paper written together with Steven Murnane and other members of the Women and Incarceration Project at Suffolk University’s Center for Women’s Health and Human Rights. Click here to read the full report.
The harms of incarceration are well-known: Crowded conditions that promote spread of infectious diseases, substandard food and ventilation, on-going exposure to violence and poor access to health care, all of which negatively impact physical and emotional health.
That American men are incarcerated at far higher rates than women is also well-known.
Less well known: Increases in male incarceration rates over the past decades have led to steeper declines in women’s life expectancy than in men’s. This “collateral damage” of mass incarceration deserves closer attention.
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Approximately 50% of U.S. women have family members who have been incarcerated (Equal Justice Initiative, 2018; Enns et al., 2019). One in four women in the United States has a family member currently in prison. This includes 44% of Black women and 12% of white women (Lee et al., 2015; Clayton-Johnson, Karefa-Johnson & Rasaki, 2020).
Women with incarcerated family members suffer significantly higher rates of heart attacks and strokes, anxiety, depression, diabetes, obesity, and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and HIV infection (Khan et al., 2011; Lee et al., 2014). Damage to women’s health starts while family members are locked up and continues for years afterwards, sometimes even escalating in the post-incarceration years (Sirois 2020).
Women with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated partners are more likely to work multiple jobs, accumulate debt, experience homelessness and housing insecurity, and have primary responsibility for children who struggle with school and health challenges (Bruns, 2017; Bruns, 2019; Clayton et al., 2018; Lee & Wildeman, 2021). While a partner’s release from prison may portend better times to come, the reality is that men’s post-incarceration landing spots — where they go when they are broke, unemployed and still dealing with the trauma of prison — are often the homes of female family members (Western et al., 2015).
Tonya, a Boston woman whom I have come to know well over the past decade, shares her frustrations. “Everywhere I turn people need me and look at me to take care of things: the children, my mother, my [formerly incarcerated] brother, my [formerly incarcerated] man. My brother moved in and my place is too crowded. And I’m in bad shape myself. I have nightmares most nights and my hair is falling out. Last month when I got my check I bought a comforter, sheets and pillows for my son’s bed. It cost $70. Then I was upset with myself for spending that money when I need it for soap, detergent, toilet paper for all these people staying here.”
Another time Tonya explained things from what she perceives as the perspective of the men who stay with her. “[He says to himself] my girlfriend or wife is stressing because I got a record which is stopping me from working and paying child support, which if you don’t pay child support they take your licenses and you go back to jail, so I have to go back to robbing someone or selling drugs, because there’s no food in the house for the kids, which is making me feel less of a man, so I become angry which leads to violence on my women, my kids, and anyone else that is coming at me in what I view as [a] negative [way].”(Read more about Tonya here.)
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The harm suffered by women like Tonya tends to be described (if at all) as “collateral damage”; that is, as unintended or incidental by-products of carceral policies aimed primarily at men, and especially men of color. Yet policies that make it difficult or impossible for formerly incarcerated people to secure jobs and housing virtually guarantee that family members (typically women) suffer harm.
Gloria, another Boston-area woman whom I have come to know, was terrified that she would be evicted if her landlord found out that Donald, her ex-boyfriend, was staying with her in her state-subsidized room. In Massachusetts and across the country there are policies prohibiting anyone with a felony conviction from visiting or living in subsidized housing (Aruleba et al., 2022). As a consequence, it is all too common for women to lose their housing due to the felony record of a partner or other family member (Ocen, 2012).
Gloria’s fear of eviction was intertwined with fear of Donald’s escalating abuse, which she attributed to the violence he saw and learned in prison. Over the course of several months Donald broke her phone, locked her in her room, and hit her in the face. Gloria’s fears were well founded: Rates of intimate partner violence committed by formerly incarcerated men are as much as five to six times higher than rates reported in the general U.S. population (McKay et al., 2016). (Read more about Gloria here.)
Gloria eventually called the police but, “I didn’t make a complaint because I don’t want to get him more angry.” She had good reason to be concerned: Data clearly show that incarcerating men—even as a response to intimate partner violence—leads to increased violence against women (Davis et al., 2021). In fact, a ten-year study of men arraigned for a crime of domestic violence in the Quincy, MA District Court found that criminal-legal interventions did little to prevent future incidents of abuse. Moreover, jail sentences (in contrast to probation supervision and other responses) were most highly linked with future abuse arrests (Klein & Tobin, 2008).
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The research cited in this post represents a small sample of what we know about how incarcerating men harms women. This information is not esoteric or obscure, fuzzy or open to multiple interpretations. It’s right out there: male incarceration is associated with higher rates of illness, assault and death for women. This harm is not “collateral” – accidental or unavoidable. Rather, it is squarely built into housing, criminal-legal, and other local, state and federal policies — any and all of which can and should be challenged.
For further reading on these topics I recommend Tasseli McKay’s new book Stolen Wealth, Hidden Power: The Case for Reparations for Mass Incarceration.
For ways to get involved I recommend checking out the organization Families for Justice as Healing.