How Gender Shapes Women’s Experiences in the Criminal Justice System

The criminal justice system was designed primarily with men in mind. But when women enter this system, they encounter challenges that reflect their distinct experiences with trauma, violence, and systemic inequality. From the moment of arrest through imprisonment and beyond, women navigate a system that often fails to recognize their specific needs and vulnerabilities.

Barriers from the first point of contact 🔗

When women interact with law enforcement, they face challenges that men rarely encounter. Women often lack access to legal aid during arrest, and police stations are frequently male-dominated environments where gender insensitivity is common. Many women report experiencing coercion during investigations, with little transparency about their rights or the legal processes they’re facing.

The problems begin even before formal charges. Research shows that women face prolonged delays in getting their cases registered compared to men, and their cases show a higher likelihood of being canceled even when the crimes are comparable. When cases do move forward, women experience longer investigation periods and face greater probability of court dismissal.

The intersection of race and gender creates compounded vulnerabilities 🔗

Gender discrimination in the justice system doesn’t operate in isolation. Women of color, particularly Black women, face what scholars call a double bind of marginalization. The case of Joan Little powerfully illustrates these intersecting forces.

In 1974, Joan Little, a young Black woman incarcerated in North Carolina, killed a white prison guard who attempted to sexually assault her. She faced the death penalty for defending herself. Little’s case drew national attention because it highlighted how Black women experience both racial and gender-based violence within the criminal justice system. She became the first woman in U.S. history to be acquitted of murder using the defense that she used deadly force to resist sexual assault.

Other incarcerated women testified during the trial about the guard’s pattern of sexual exploitation, revealing how he had previously forced female inmates to provide sexual favors in exchange for basic items like snacks and magazines. This case exposed the systemic nature of sexual violence against incarcerated women, particularly women of color.

Healthcare and pregnancy behind bars 🔗

Women in prison have specific health needs that correctional facilities consistently fail to address. For pregnant women, the situation is particularly dire. Between five and ten percent of women enter prison pregnant, and approximately two thousand babies are born to incarcerated women each year.

Despite constitutional requirements to provide healthcare, many facilities offer inadequate prenatal care. A study of prison systems found that twelve states failed to provide any policy on prenatal care, and only about half of pregnant women in prison reported receiving prenatal care while incarcerated. Women from precarious social and economic backgrounds often have high-risk pregnancies requiring specialized attention, yet twenty-two states and the federal Bureau of Prisons had not provided guidelines for specialized care for these situations.

The trauma of separation 🔗

Perhaps the most devastating aspect of pregnancy during incarceration is what happens after birth. Most incarcerated mothers are allowed only about 24 hours with their newborns in the hospital before being separated and returned to prison. This practice occurs despite research showing that early separation disrupts critical bonding periods and can have lasting psychological effects on both mother and child.

The consequences extend beyond emotional trauma. Eleven percent of children of incarcerated mothers are placed in foster care, compared to just two percent of children of incarcerated fathers. This separation can lead to permanent termination of parental rights under federal law, particularly when mothers serve longer sentences.

Some states have begun creating prison mother-baby units that allow infants to stay with their mothers for limited periods, and these programs have shown promising results. Research indicates that mothers who participated in these units were more likely to live with their children years later and had lower rates of returning to prison.

Systemic health disparities 🔗

Beyond pregnancy-related needs, women in custody face significant health challenges. Women under correctional supervision are four to five times more likely to develop cervical cancer than women who are not incarcerated. This disparity stems partly from lower rates of preventive screening both before and during custody, often because invasive screenings can be triggering for survivors of sexual assault.

Mental health needs also go largely unmet. Two-thirds of women in prison and jails are diagnosed with mental health disorders, compared to about one-third of men. These women are more likely to experience serious psychological distress and are three times more likely than men to be diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Yet mental health treatment in most facilities focuses primarily on medication management rather than psychotherapy, and wait lists for treatment are common.

Sexual violence in detention 🔗

Sexual assault remains a pervasive problem in women’s correctional facilities. Women are four times more likely than men to report sexual victimization by other incarcerated people in prisons, and more than twice as likely in jails. When perpetrators are staff members, the power imbalance makes reporting extremely difficult.

A 2022 Senate report found that correctional employees had sexually abused incarcerated women in at least 19 of 29 federal facilities within a ten-year period. The report revealed that the federal Bureau of Prisons had not successfully implemented Prison Rape Elimination Act mandates, allowing abuse to continue unchecked. At one California facility alone, eight employees including the warden were charged with sexually abusing multiple women.

The path to meaningful reform 🔗

Addressing these gendered experiences requires systemic changes throughout the criminal justice process. Gender-based discrimination creates significant obstacles to achieving access to justice for women at every stage, from arrest through reentry. Criminal justice systems designed around male populations fail to address the distinct pathways that bring women into contact with the law, including histories of trauma, intimate partner violence, and economic marginalization.

Some jurisdictions are beginning to implement gender-responsive approaches. These include specialized diversion programs that address root causes of women’s offending, treatment courts that provide alternatives to incarceration, and prison programs that maintain connections between incarcerated mothers and their children. However, these remain the exception rather than the rule.

The experiences of women in the criminal justice system reveal fundamental gaps in how society responds to crime and punishment. When systems fail to account for gender-specific needs, they perpetuate cycles of trauma and marginalization rather than promoting rehabilitation and justice.

What do you think? How can criminal justice systems better address the specific needs and experiences of women throughout the legal process? What role should trauma-informed and gender-responsive approaches play in reforming current practices?

References

1. https://counciloncj.org/womens-justice-a-preliminary-assessment-of-women-in-the-criminal-justice-system/
2. https://politicalsciencenow.com/behind-the-blindfold-analyzing-gender-discrimination-in-the-criminal-justice-system/
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Little
4. https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/joan-little-acquitted/
5. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2019/12/05/pregnancy/
6. https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/shackling-and-separation-motherhood-prison/2013-09
7. https://jaapl.org/content/early/2020/05/13/JAAPL.003924-20
8. https://msmagazine.com/2025/11/13/joan-little-documentary/
9. https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/justice-and-prison-reform/cpcj-gender.html