The Complex Reality Behind Women’s Rising Jail Populations
By Bryn Hill, Senior Research Associate
After decades of rapid increase, cities and counties across the country were starting to reduce the numbers of women held in American jails. But since the pandemic’s peak, those numbers have started to climb again—and at a higher rate than men. But little research is on the subject. CUNY ISLG researchers have conducted analyses to better understand why women are being booked, how long they’re staying, and how it compares across demographics and to men.
From 1980 to 2022, the number of women in American prisons and jails increased by more than 585 percent. Yet women in local jails have often remained overlooked in both research and reform efforts. While much of the existing literature focuses on prisons, nearly half of all incarcerated women are held in local jails, making jails a critical—but understudied—entry point into the criminal legal system.
Building on ISLG’s 2024 analysis of women in Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC) sites, our new research brief The Hidden Crisis of Women in Jails analyzes newly available data through 2024 (along with early 2025 trends where possible) examines how women’s jail incarceration patterns have continued to evolve nationally and across SJC jurisdictions since the pandemic.
The updated findings paint a more complicated picture of progress than overall jail population trends might suggest. While many jurisdictions achieved substantial reductions in overall jail populations before and during the pandemic, those gains have not held equally for women. To the contrary, in many places the gap has substantially widened, and women continue to be one of the fastest-growing segments of jail populations.
This updated analysis explores how women’s jail incarceration trends compare to men’s, how outcomes differ across racial and ethnic groups, and how booking patterns vary by charge type. The findings also highlight important gaps in how offenses—particularly domestic violence-related offenses—are tracked and categorized. Together, the findings underscore the need for more gender-responsive, survivor-informed approaches to jail reform, which ultimately is dependent on a greater availability of quality data on women in jails.
What the Numbers Tell Us About Women and Jail
After declining before and during the pandemic, the population of women in jail has risen since 2021. This has reversed much of the progress made in prior years, both nationally and, even more substantially, in SJC sites
Before the pandemic, many communities had made meaningful progress in reducing not only the overall jail population but the number of women in jail. Those gains have not lasted. Since 2021, the number of women in jail has been rising again, both across the country and even more sharply in SJC sites. This means that the progress made just a few years ago has been undone, and more women are now being held in jail than expected based on earlier trends.
The most recent available data by quarter (February to April 2025) shows the disproportionate impact for women in jail has continued to increase, with average daily population (ADP) rising 54 percent from the February-April 2021 period compared to only 11 percent for men.
When compared to men, women held in SJC site jails have fared worse post-pandemic, with larger increases in incarceration rates, booking rates, and average length of stay (ALOS) at release.
Comparing outcomes for women and men in SJC sites, women are falling further behind on several key measures. In recent years, women have seen larger increases in how often they are incarcerated and booked into jail, and in how long they stay before release. This means that not only are more women coming into the system, but they are staying longer once they are there—and at a faster rate of increase than men.
Women of color continue to be disproportionately booked and incarcerated at higher rates than white women, highlighting the importance of intersectionality when studying patterns in jail trends.
Racial and ethnic disparities persist on top of the gender-based trends, illustrating how the intersectionality of race and gender shape how people experience the criminal legal system. Data show women of color continue to be booked into jail and held at higher rates than white women, showing that not all women are affected in the same way and pointing to deeper, long-standing inequities that influence who is more likely to be arrested, booked, and detained.
What the Numbers Alone Don’t Tell Us About Women and Jail
Overall jail populations declined in many jurisdictions before and during the pandemic, signaling meaningful progress in efforts to safely reduce the unnecessary use of jail. But a closer look reveals a more complicated story for women. In many places, the gains seen in reducing jail use were not experienced equally across genders, and in the years following the pandemic, those gaps have widened. Economic hardship, housing instability, strained social services, and other lingering effects of the pandemic may all be contributing to increased system involvement for women, raising important questions about why reforms that helped lower jail populations overall have proven less durable for women than for men.
To better understand the drivers behind these shifts, CUNY ISLG conducted an additional in-depth analysis of booking patterns and charge-level data across SJC sites. By examining 1.9 million new charge bookings from 2018 to 2024, researchers compared trends over time and between men and women. This included a focus on whether shifts in the types of charges women were being booked on were contributing to these patterns.
Women are more likely to be booked on a new misdemeanor charge than men, including property and drug-related offenses.
Even though many sites in the SJC have worked to cut down on jail bookings for low-level offenses, women are still being booked at higher rates than men for new misdemeanor charges. While overall progress has been made to reduce unnecessary jail use, particularly for lower-level misdemeanor charges, that progress is not translating equally for women and men.
Despite a reduction in overall new charge bookings between 2018-2019 and 2024, new charge bookings for violent offenses, including domestic violence charges, have increased for women.
Since 2018–2019, there has been an increase in women booked into jail for violent and domestic violence–related offenses. However, research suggests these charges may not always reflect straightforward patterns of offending. Women involved in domestic violence incidents are sometimes identified as the primary aggressor even when acting in self-defense, responding to coercive control, or facing false accusations from an abusive partner. In jurisdictions with mandatory arrest policies, law enforcement may also arrest both parties during a domestic violence call, meaning some bookings may reflect complex circumstances such as retaliatory violence, resistance to abuse, self-defense, or dual arrests rather than solely perpetration.
Current Reforms Are Falling Short for Women
While many jurisdictions have made important strides in reducing reliance on jail, these improvements have not been experienced equally across genders. Women continue to be booked into jail at disproportionate rates for lower-level misdemeanor offenses, suggesting that broad, one-size-fits-all reforms, like those focused on reducing jail use for lower-level offenses, may not fully address the realities driving women’s involvement in the criminal legal system, particularly in our post-pandemic world. Factors such as unequal caregiving responsibilities, increased economic instability, behavioral health needs, and exposure to trauma and domestic violence often shape women’s pathways into the system differently than men’s, pointing to the need for more gender-responsive approaches. This highlights the need to look beyond overall trends and examine who is most affected by current policies and practices, as well as how system responses may differ based on gender and circumstance.
At the same time, gaps in how data are collected and categorized make it difficult to fully understand women’s experiences in the system. Domestic violence offenses are not consistently defined or tracked across jurisdictions, and law enforcement discretion may influence whether incidents are coded as domestic violence or charged as more general violent offenses. In four of the 16 sites included in this analysis, domestic violence offenses could only be identified if tied to a protective order violation, meaning that some women connected to domestic violence incidents may instead appear in broader violent offense categories.
These findings suggest that increases in women’s bookings for violent offenses should be interpreted carefully and within context. Without better data and more nuanced approaches, the system risks overlooking the complex circumstances that shape many women’s involvement in the criminal legal system. Together, the findings highlight the importance of developing more tailored, survivor-informed, and gender-responsive strategies to support fairer and more effective reform efforts.
Photo by mikevanschoonderwalt on Adobe Stock.