Although women account for only 6.5 percent of all prisoners nationwide, they are the fastest growing incarcerated population in the United States. During 1998, the number of women under the jurisdiction of state or federal prison authorities reached a total of 84,427, outpacing the rise in the number of men for the third consecutive year. In addition, 63,791 women were held daily in jails and 737,958 female juvenile arrests were made at midyear 1998.
Women in prison have different health care needs than that of male prisoners. These differences result from several factors: women's relatively complex reproductive systems, their status as pregnant women and mothers, their care giving responsibility for children who are minors, their increasingly high-risk illicit drug behavior, their increased rates of HIV positivity, and their history of physical and sexual abuse.
