The RAVE Act

Suzanne Wills, Drug Policy Chair

The United States has 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s prisoners. About half a million of those prisoners are held for non-violent drug offenses. That is more people than are imprisoned in the European Union for all offenses and they have 100 million more people. Increasingly more U. S. prisoners are women. While the total number of male prisoners has grown 24% since 1995, the number of female prisoners has increased by 36%.

The typical female prisoner has been convicted of holding and using small amounts of narcotics, is poor, black and a mother. Nearly half of all female convictions since 1986 were for non-violent drug offenses. 80% of imprisoned women report incomes of less than $2,000 in the year before the arrest. Although blacks and whites use drugs at approximately the same rates, black women are incarcerated at the rate of 199 per 100,000 compared to 61 per 100,000 for Hispanic women and 36 per 100,000 for white women. 80% of female inmates have children.

Both male and female drug offenders serve long sentences thanks to mandatory minimum sentencing, but women usually end up serving more time for lesser offenses. "The only way you can escape mandatory minimum is by cooperating, and that means giving someone else up," says Monica Pratt, of Families Against Mandatory Minimums. A woman is likely to be on the periphery of a distribution network and therefore has little to trade for a lighter sentence. Her boyfriend is often more deeply involved and can cut a better deal.

While imprisoned many female inmates are sexually abused by the staff. They are routinely shackled during hospitalization and childbirth.

"Female incarcerations place three generations at risk and destroy families, leaving lasting scars on children as well as putting an enormous financial and health burden on grandmother caregivers," according to Dorothy Ruiz in a paper published in the Western Michigan University, School of Social Work Journal.

Rather than turn the kids over to the child welfare system, the grandmother often steps forward to take care of them. These grandmothers suffer from health problems, such as depression, insomnia, hypertension, back pain, and stomach pain, caused by physical and emotional stress. The women also tend to suffer social isolation as they juggle their various responsibilities. But the grandmothers tend to under-emphasize their health problems to avoid being seen as too infirm to take care of kids who have nowhere else to go.

The financial burden is severe, as well. Many grandmothers have worked low-wage jobs all their lives and, unlike surrogates in the foster care system, do not receive monetary support from the government. The arrangement is precarious for both the caretakers and the children.

The family’s problems are not over when the inmate is released from prison. Persons with felony convictions for drug use or sale permanently lose all welfare benefits under the welfare reform laws of 1996. As a result, grandmothers often retain responsibility for kids during a lengthy transition period after the mothers leave prison.

If the family lives in public housing, there is a substantial risk of losing their home if the returning ex-offender is still addicted -- one offense by a relative and the whole family, including the grandmother and the children can be thrown out. There is virtually no drug rehabilitation until the last few months in prison, and, at the federal level, even that is left to the discretion of prison officials.

Not surprisingly, the children of prisoners become the most likely people in our society to ultimately be imprisoned themselves.

Sources: Bobbi Murray, “Orphaned By the Drug War” AlterNet, September 26, 2002.

Drug War Facts, Women, www.drugwarfacts.org.