Sending a mother to prison can have a devastating effect on her children. Why, then, do we lock so many women up?

By Sarah Stillman  writing in Newyorker.com

Photo by Zoraida Lopez

She writes, “America imprisons women in astonishing numbers. The population of women in state prisons has increased by more than eight hundred percent in the past four decades. The number of women in local jails is fourteen times higher than it was in the nineteen-seventies; most of these women haven’t been convicted of a crime but are too poor to post bail while awaiting trial. The majority have been charged with low-level, nonviolent offenses, such as drug possession, shoplifting, and parole violations. The result is that more than a quarter of a million children in the U.S. have a mother in jail. One in nine black children has a parent who is, or has been, incarcerated.”  Read the entire article HERE.