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I thought you might be interested in the article from the FAIR web site. The following article will be appended to your message: Locked-Up Women Locked Out of Coverage By Laura Flanders There is no shortage of reasons why women end up in jail. Women earn less, are responsible for more and are among the least well-protected people in the country. A recent article in Harper's magazine (4/94) pointed out that a single mother is almost required to resort to illegal activity if she is to feed and clothe two children on the roughly $300 to $400 cash grant she gets per month from AFDC. Yet some reporters still drag out the old tired feminist villain to explain the rise in female offenders. "Female Crime Rate Alarming, Law Officials Say; Drugs, Women's Movement Called Factors in Arrests, Prosecutions", an Arizona Republic headline announced (10/26/93). A Houston Chronicle report took a similar approach (5/10/92): "Some argue that the participation of women in crime parallels women's entrance into previously male-dominated roles." The desperate stab at women's rights activists would be funny if it didn't mask a dangerous failure to investigate the reasons for women's imprisonment. "Stereotypically, victims are female and criminals are male," says Meda Chesney-Lind, director of Women's Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. There's little comprehension of why women end up in jail, says Chesney-Lind, because "women offenders are basically media roadkill." It's not that there aren't newspaper stories on women in prison-- well-informed reports crop up regularly. But when the discussion is national crime policy, women--consistent with the media's notion that they are separate from the category of regular humans--fade away. To read the rest of the article, please click on the link below. http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1231 This article was published on Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting's Website (http://www.fair.org).

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