Lee’s Blog 15

The first prison in the United States opened in the 1780’s. It took a very short time to open up more prisons. There were fifteen prisons in the United States in 1820.

In the early days of the prison system, women were thought of more as being annoying and men were in prison to be reformed. Women and men were both originally housed in the same prison. The first women’s prison was the Mount Pleasant Prison and it opened in 1839.

In what is known as the second phase of the penal system in the United States, women were often sent to half way houses instead of actually being kept in a prison. It was thought that women were not as violent as men, so they did not actually need to be in a prison, per se. The prison system wanted to rehabilitate the male prisoner into what they thought was the ideal man.

A problem throughout the history of women being incarcerated is that of female inmates being raped and abused. While we would tend to think that those that did this were male guards, I feel confident that other female inmates were also guilty of this act.

Current statistics show that, for every one female inmate, there are twenty-four male inmates. That number is shrinking, though, as more and more females are incarcerated.

One thing very prevalent is the gender perception and segregation in prisons. Women are often made to cook, clean, do laundry, do gardening, and other “female” tasks while men tend to work in construction, the railroad, and other supposedly more demanding jobs.

The first prison in Arizona was the Yuma Territorial Prison. It opened in 1875. The Yuma Prison housed both men and women together. As prison reforms continued to be birthed, the Yuma Territorial Prison eventually closed.
Today, men and women have separate prisons. This is the case both in Arizona and across the country