Why Oklahoma has the highest female incarceration rate in the country | Public Radio International
▻https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-10-03/why-oklahomas-female-incarceration-rate-so-high
For over 25 years, Oklahoma has led the nation in the rate at which it sends women to prison. Roughly 151 of every 100,000 Oklahoma women are behind bars — twice the national average.
And, they’re staying longer. Stephens County, a mostly rural area where Allen is from, had the third-highest rate of women in prison. Allen is serving 20 years for possession of methamphetamines — two times longer than the state average.
“You can sometimes find ... three generations of a family incarcerated at the same time. For example, a mother, a grandmother, the daughter,” she said.
The majority of women incarcerated in Oklahoma are doing time for nonviolent crimes and drug-related offenses. As Sharp explains, women, particularly mothers, are treated more harshly and sometimes receive longer sentences than men because their crimes are drug-related.
“I think the general population of the state feels that a woman — particularly a woman who has children — who uses drugs, violates all the norms in a way that they find unacceptable and they would rather see those children grow up in foster care than to be with a mother who had a drug problem.”
Sharp also explains that Oklahoma has outdated attitudes about what constitutes proper womanhood.
“This is an extremely conservative state and an extremely religious state and very evangelical and a lot of biblical literalism. So, the belief that women have a certain role in society — that role is to give up themselves and put themselves and their own wants, goals, desires secondary to taking care of their husband and children.”