Report Shows More Women Being Arrested Females Make Up Increasing Percentage Of Prison Inmates

A growing percentage of the adults on probation and parole across the country are women, according to the latest Justice Department report on the U.S. correctional population.

While men still commit many more crimes, there has been a “dramatic increase in the number of women arrested” over the past decade, said Allen J. Beck of the Bureau of Justice Statistics. As a result, women also are a rising percentage of the prison population.

In 1996, Beck said Sunday, there were more than 650,000 women on probation, 21 percent of all probationers, and 79,000 women on parole, 11 percent of that total. In 1990, women represented 18 percent of all probationers and 8 percent of all parolees.

The report, compiled by Beck and agency statistician Jodi M. Brown, said there were almost 3.9 million adults on probation or parole at the end of 1996, an increase of 3.4 percent from the year before. Another 1.6 million were locked up in jail or prison, putting the total correctional population in the country at 5.5 million, a new high.

“There has been an increasing use of incarceration since 1985,” Beck said. In 1985, only one of four adults under correctional supervision was in jail or prison. Last year, three of 10 were.

Men still account for four of every five arrests, but Beck said there has been increasing involvement of women in crime. For instance, he said, between 1986 and 1995, “there was a 12 percent increase in the number of men arrested but a 38 percent increase in the number of females arrested.”

Arrests for driving while intoxicated, Beck said, show a striking change. Women accounted for 5.5 percent of those charged in 1986, but 14 percent in 1995.

Overall, women accounted for 17 percent of all arrests in 1986 and 20 percent in 1995, the most recent year for which those numbers are available.