know the system...to change the system

Research on women’s pathways into crime demonstrates that gender plays an important role shaping patterns of criminal activity. The profile of women offenders is significantly different from that of their male counterparts:

* They are more likely to have serious substance-abuse issues.
* The vast majority are victims of physical or sexual abuse (80% in California).
* They suffer from serious physical and mental illness
* The majority have children under the age of 18 at the time of incarceration
* The majority of women offenders are nonviolent, with studies showing that these same nonviolent offenders pose no risk of harm to our communities. (The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that, according to victim account, only one of seven offenders is female.)

Research also indicates that there are distinguishing aspects between men and women offenders. They come into the criminal justice system via different pathways; respond to supervision and custody differently; exhibit differences in terms of substance abuse, trauma, mental illness, parenting responsibilities, and employment histories; and represent different levels of risk within both the institution and the community.
Because women make up only 7% of California’s prison population, gender-responsive strategies have been historically de-emphasized. The CDCR recognized the critical need for a new vision for the criminal justice system recognizing that behavioral and social differences between men and women offenders have specific implications for gender responsive policy and practice. In 2005, they created the Gender Responsive Strategies Commission (GRSC) to focus on new policies and practices for women offenders.

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So, this is all probably very boring to you. But I'm super stoked because this process is more and more exciting by the minute. For the past couple months, I've been working with a group of 6 other women to create a bill/draft of legislation that will make this commission (addressing women's needs in prison) permanent, ensuring a lasting focus on strategies designed to improve the lives of female offenders and their families. The draft of legislation that we wrote was attached to another bill addressing women in prison...however, moments ago, we found out that the legislator who decided to author our bill has made the decision to carry our language by itself and not attach it to another bill.

This is significant because we were positive that our bill wouldn't pass its first committee hearing because the language that it was attached to had an enormous price tag on it, whereas our bill language had very little costs.

Now that State legislators will be able to review our bill language on its own merit, we have a better chance of getting this through (crossing fingers.) But of course, nothing's guaranteed 'til the governator decides to place his autograph on our proposed words.

We'll see what happens...