Access to The Champion archive is one of many exclusive member benefits. It’s normally restricted to just NACDL members. However, this content, and others like it, is available to everyone in order to educate the public on why criminal justice reform is a necessity.
My first jury trial following the birth of my oldest daughter was in a courthouse built in 1971 in a rural North Carolina town. My daughter was still breastfeeding, so on top of my banker boxes of files I packed my electric breast pump, which would allow me to serve my dual roles as criminal defense attorney and food source and mother for my infant. During our first morning break, I confronted the question of where I could find both a power source for the pump and some privacy. The architect of the Union County Courthouse had not contemplated this moment and certainly not this need. I found a supply closet with an outlet where I could get the job done while keeping my foot pressed against a door that had no lock. As I adapted for this inconvenience, I contemplated the effectiveness of systems that are not built for the populations they serve. I thought about my female clients who were brought to this system in handcuffs, who would not go home at the end of the day, and who had no power or control in their circumstance.
The institutions where we spend our days — courthouses and jails — were not built by women, and they were not built for women. While I am encouraged to see the increasing number of women attorneys in criminal defense, the steep increase in the number of our female clients presents a growing threat to justice as they are fed into a system that is not built to care for or offer them meaningful rehabilitation. The number of incarcerated women in the United States has grown at nearly twice the rate of men over the past several decades, yet the system remains structurally designed around male populations. Between 1980 and 2023, the number of women in prison rose more than 600%.{1}1 https://www.sentencingproject.org/fact-sheet/incarcerated-women-and-girls/.
As an organization committed to redressing systemic racism, racial disparities within this population of incarcerated women is deeply concerning:
- Black women are incarcerated at 1.7 times the rate of white women.{2}2 https://www.sentencingproject.org/fact-sheet/incarcerated-women-and-girls/#footnote-ref-4.
- Native women are incarcerated at 3.5 times the rate of white women.{3}3 https://www.sentencingproject.org/fact-sheet/incarcerated-women-and-girls/#footnote-ref-5.
- The disparity only grows for juveniles. Native girls have the highest incarceration rate, over 4 times the rate of white girls (39 per 100,000). Black girls are also disproportionately incarcerated at over 3 times the rate of white girls (29 per 100,000).{4}4 https://www.sentencingproject.org/fact-sheet/incarcerated-women-and-girls/#footnote-ref-4.
Women enter the criminal legal system through pathways that are markedly different from men. Ninety percent of women in jails and prisons are victims of childhood trauma.{5}5 https://counciloncj.org/womens-justice-a-preliminary-assessment-of-women-in-the-criminal-justice-system/#risk-factors. A significant proportion have histories of physical or sexual abuse, coercive relationships, and economic instability. While the need for trauma and addiction treatment is clear, we, as their last champions, must ask: Are our jails and prisons equipped to meet the needs of the women they serve to rehabilitate?
The outcomes for women are also concerning. Women face further trauma while incarcerated and risk dying at a far greater rate. A Senate subcommittee report published in 2022 found that correctional employees had sexually abused incarcerated women in at least two-thirds of federal facilities — 19 out of 29 — within the previous 10 years.{6}6 United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Sexual Abuse of Female Inmates in Federal Prisons (2022). Lack of treatment or psychological care is fatal. Women have a higher mortality rate than men in jails, dying of drug and alcohol intoxication at twice the rate. And the number of deaths by suicide among women in jails increased by almost 65% between the periods of 2000–2004 and 2015–2019.{7}7 https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024women.html#:~:text=Women%20are%20more%20likely%20than,and%20experience%20serious%20psychological%20distress.
We cannot solve this problem alone, but it is incumbent upon criminal defense lawyers to raise these issues at every opportunity at both an individual and policy level. During the year ahead, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers will bring attention to this growing crisis.
First, we must educate ourselves to the reality women clients face. The NACDL Women in Criminal Defense Committee will publish a report on Women in Prisons to inform our members. This report can be used to educate judges and prosecutors about the practical challenges clients face to assist you in receiving fairer, more rational and humane results for clients.
Second, we must raise this crisis in conversation in legal and nonlegal communities. The reason movies and television shows about our profession abound is that we have a point of view that much of the world wants to hear. Tell them what we see and what our clients face. Tell them the system that has been promised to them is not the one that we have.
Third, we must work together. We have over 28 members across the country working to produce the Women in Prisons report. If this is not the issue that moves you, take a look at NACDL’s active committees and get involved in an issue that speaks to you. Join our listserv and share a strategy that has worked for you or share a challenge you are facing; one of our more than 10,000 members may have the insight you need. Attend a live CLE. Make friends. Build your community here. Together, we can improve your practice, impact policy that makes a difference in clients’ lives, and ensure that the criminal defense bar is fully equipped to serve all accused persons at the highest level. I look forward to working with all of you in the year ahead.
About the Author
C. Melissa Owen is a founding partner of Tin Fulton Walker & Owen. Missy Owen’s personal practice areas include state and federal criminal defense, with a focus on white collar matters, financial crime, defense of sex offense prosecutions, and Title IX representation. She is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, a Fellow of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers, and a Fellow of the American Board of Criminal Lawyers.
C. Melissa Owen (NACDL Life Member)
Tin Fulton Walker & Owen, PLLC
Charlotte, North Carolina
704-338-1220
cmowen@tinfulton.com
https://www.tinfulton.com
