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Cleveland
Plain Dealer
White women sent to Ohio prisons
in record numbers, reports say
By
John Caniglia
August
15, 2013
CLEVELAND,
Ohio -- Amanda Lane is the face of Ohio's
fastest-growing prison trend.
Lane,
28, is white and from rural Pickaway County, where she was
convicted of drug charges and sentenced to 18 months in prison. The
state's
prisons are filling up with people just like her, a surge that has
shocked
researchers and experts.
White
women, many from rural Ohio, are the fastest growing
population in Ohio prisons. In fact, they made up 80 percent of the
female
felons sentenced to prison between June 30, 2012, and July 1, or fiscal
year
2013, according to state records.
Compare
that to fiscal year 2003, when white women sentenced to
prison made up 55 percent of females in prison. In 1998, they made up
43
percent, according to state records.
On
June 1, there were 3,974 female inmates in Ohio prisons; 2,962
were white, or nearly 75 percent. Nationally, the numbers of white
women
sentenced to prison rose 48 percent from 2000 to 2009, according to the
Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C., think tank.
"It's
a major shift,'' said Steve Van Dine, chief of the
bureau of research for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and
Correction,
speaking about the trend here. "It's rather dramatic.''
Researchers
say it is clear where many of the the numbers are
coming from: rural Ohio.
"That's
the thing that jumped out at me,'' said James Austin,
a national researcher who studied women in Ohio prisons through a grant
from
the U.S. Justice Department. "The numbers weren't coming from Cleveland
or
Columbus, but from predominantly white, rural counties...
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the rest of the article at the Cleveland Plain Dealer
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