Two new reports from the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan thinktank, highlight the high economic costs of incarcerating women in the United States, where the female prison population has grown more than 600% since 1980.
Imprisoning women costs 75% more than men, with annual costs ranging from $87,000 to $122,000 per woman, compared to $70,000 for men. The higher costs are driven by women's specialized healthcare needs, including pregnancy care, and smaller populations leading to higher per-person expenses. By 2035, female incarceration could cost as much as $34 billion per year.
Reducing Sentences Could Save Billions
A companion study from the council examined data from Illinois and North Carolina and found that cutting women's prison time in half would have a negligible effect on crime. Early releases would increase annual arrests by just 0.3% in Illinois and 0.2% in North Carolina, with nine out of ten new arrests for nonviolent offenses.
Researchers estimate that halving sentences for women could save up to $94.1 million in Illinois and $102.7 million in North Carolina. These savings are likely undercounted, as they do not account for the unpaid labor of caregiving, grocery shopping, cooking, and cleaning that must be replaced when a woman is removed from her family. That loss is estimated at $2.8 billion per year.
Impact on Families and Communities
Dr. Stephanie Kennedy, the council's policy director, noted that most discussions about incarceration focus on men, ignoring the unique impacts on women. "When you pull a man out of a home and send him to prison, his children stay with their mother, and so someone is still washing hands and putting on jammies and buying groceries and doing homework with those kids there," she said. When a woman is removed, it destabilizes entire families.
Formerly incarcerated women like Colette Payne of Chicago, who served time for nonviolent offenses, emphasized that women are primary caregivers. "We are primary caregivers and we leave small children behind," said Payne, now director of the Reclamation Project. Her family supported her recovery, highlighting the broader social costs of incarceration.
