Prison Insider: Incarceration rates of girls and women are constantly on the rise. Between 2000 and 2022, their number has increased by almost 60%, compared with 22% for the male prison population, although overall they still represent the minority. The increase is particularly marked in Latin America, Asia and Oceania. The criminalisation of women extends across borders and reveals significant disparities in judicial treatment.

Zero-tolerance policies for minor offences largely explain this increase. They often target women who are trapped in vulnerable, precarious or violent situations. They are frequently incarcerated for non-violent offences related to survival, protecting their families, economic pressures, or due to behaviours considered unacceptable for their gender.

Judicial systems, long created by and for men, struggle to take into account experiences and circumstances that differ from those of men. They impose sentences designed without considering gender realities and the role that women play in their communities. What is the punitive logic at play, and what is being done to organise the fight against it?

Prison Insider explores the systems where minor acts become grounds for charges criminalising hundreds of thousands of women all over the world. For this article, it sought out associations and groups working to transform faulty political and judicial systems.

Read full article: Women bearing the weight of the law