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As we celebrate recent drug policy reform victories, we know that the drug war is far from over. One of the drug war’s biggest targets? Women. Let’s take a closer look at how drug enforcement specifically impacts women.
[THREAD] https://thecrimereport.org/2020/11/10/a-tragic-link-drugs-and-rising-womens-incarceration/
[THREAD] https://thecrimereport.org/2020/11/10/a-tragic-link-drugs-and-rising-womens-incarceration/
How have women been impacted by drug arrests? While drug arrests have actually decreased for men over the past 35 years, drug arrests have increased nearly 190% for women during that same period. Infographic from @PrisonPolicy
What about imprisonment rates for women? Between 1978 and 2014, the number of women in state and federal prisons grew by nearly 800%. Today, almost 25% of women in state prisons are there because of a drug offense. In federal prison, it’s nearly 45%.
When it comes to jail incarceration rates for women, over 25% of women in jail are there because of a drug offense. And another 32% are in jail because of a property offense, which is often tied to substance use disorder and addiction.
Black and Latinx women are incarcerated at higher rates than white women, though incarceration rates for white women have been slowly rising. These disparate rates of incarceration reflect targeted policing, surveillance, and criminalization of Black and Latinx women.
Sexual violence is an inherent part of the drug war. Police use the drug war as a proxy to target, harass, and enact violence on women, especially Black trans women. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/10/phoenix-police-officers-rape-sexual-assault
Drug use has become one of the most prevalent allegations in foster care cases, even though the assumption that drug use results in the inability to care for children is not supported by evidence. The biggest targets? Black, Latinx, and Indigenous mothers.
Studies suggest that the majority of foster system cases involve drug use allegations, but often a finding of maltreatment is based on a positive drug test alone rather than on any demonstrated harm to the child.
A report from @movfamilypower that DPA co-published found that from 2001 to 2011, 1 in 17 white, 1 in 9 Black and 1 in 7 Indigenous children were removed from parents’ care, despite the fact that mothers of all races use drugs at similar rates.
So what does this mean? In large part because of the drug war, women - primarily Black, Latinx, and Indigenous women - have more limited access to job opportunities, education, and TANF and SNAP benefits and are more likely to be separated from their children.
We tend to think of women as “collateral damage” of the drug war, but women are not collateral. To truly end the drug war, we must be attuned to the ways that women are targeted, criminalized, and punished.
