Prison Sentencing Argument

The year is 2016; the American woman has the right to vote, the right to an education, and now has the right to fight on the front lines alongside fellow Marines, Soldiers, Sailors, or Airmen. Currently one of the major party candidates for president in the 2016 election is a woman. After all of the years women have spent fighting for equal pay, equal rights, and equal responsibility, should they be granted leniency when it comes to prison sentencing? The answer to that question can be summed up in one word, no. I will begin defending my position on this topic by starting with the Women’s rights movement, the initial meeting held in 1848 at Seneca Falls, New York. These brave women drafted a document, taking a page from Declaration of Independence itself “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal” (DuBois, 1978). This equality that both women and men are born with must be shared at all times, not just in times that are convenient for the individual looking for the additional rights. The article given for this reaction cites that 2/3 (66%) of incarcerated lived with their minor children compared to 44% of males. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics which is part of the U.S. Department of Justice, “Males in Federal prisons had nearly 15 times as many minor children in total as female Federal inmates; 8 in 10 of these men and just under 6 in 10 women resided with the children prior to entering prison” (Greenfeld & Snell, 1999). Proportionally speaking more fathers are being taken away from their children under the current system than mothers. The last essentially nullifies the entire second paragraph of the article given for this assignment. Not only is it not a different issue then what men face, but a higher number of men that are incarcerated are taken away from their children. As of 1988 there were at total of 18,226 juveniles (under the age of 18) that were incarcerated in a long term facility. Of these incarcerated juveniles “Almost 60% of these juveniles (boys and girls under age 18) reported that they used drugs regularly, and more than …show more content…
Most of these juveniles - about half the juveniles in long-term confinement- said they had lived primarily with their mothers. And more than half of them reported that a family member also had been imprisoned at least once. About 26% said their fathers had been incarcerated. ” (BJS Data Report, 1988). This data shows that keeping these mothers out of prison does not have a positive influence on their children, living with their mother does not decrease the chance of them staying out of the corrections system. In fact the majority of this report shows the having a father figure that is not incarcerated, plays an important role to keep juveniles out of prison.
I believe that having different sentencing for women and men is not only unfair to women, but to their children as well. It not only sends the message that it is ok to break the law as long as it is only a minor offense, or ok to break the law because you are a woman, but it keeps a bad influence in these children’s lives. Childhood is essentially when we are taught right from wrong, and a judge being lenient on a woman because she has children is not the correct message to