The Prison Policy Initiative has released Women’s Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2026 (Wendy Sawyer and Brian Nam-Sonenstein, October 14, 2026). The report pulls together data from many government agencies to show how many women and girls are confined in the United States, where they are held, and why.
The big picture
About 198,800 women and girls are incarcerated across state and federal prisons, local jails, youth facilities, immigration detention, Indian country jails, military prisons, and psychiatric hospitals. That is about 4% more than the organization’s previous count. Most of the increase comes from growth in state prisons and local jails. Women are only about 1 in 10 people behind bars, but for decades their incarceration grew twice as fast as men’s. Since the pandemic, women’s prison and jail populations have been recovering faster than men’s.
Jails play an outsized role
Unlike the overall incarcerated population, more incarcerated women are held in jails than in prisons. Most women held for local authorities (61%) have not been convicted and are waiting for trial, often because they cannot afford bail. This has serious consequences. Women die in jails at higher rates than men, jails provide limited health care, and phone calls and mail are expensive and restricted. Around 80% of women in jail are mothers, so these barriers affect children too.
Who is incarcerated
Surveys of women in state prisons show high rates of childhood hardship, homelessness, unemployment, disability, substance use disorders, and mental health problems. Many of them received little treatment once they were inside. More than half are parents of minor children, and many were single parents living with their kids before prison. Black, American Indian/Alaska Native, and lesbian or bisexual women are overrepresented.
Girls and smaller “slices”
More than 5,000 girls are confined. Nearly 1 in 4 girls in juvenile facilities is held for a probation technical violation or a status offense such as running away or truancy, which is twice the rate for boys. ICE now holds about 7,700 women and girls, a sharp increase. For the first time, the report also estimates that about 2,900 women are involuntarily committed to psychiatric facilities because of criminal charges.
Beyond prison walls
Incarceration covers only 18% of women under correctional control. Another 819,400 women are on probation or parole, and about three-quarters of all women under supervision are on probation. Fees, travel restrictions, and reporting requirements can be especially hard for low-income mothers, and violations can send them to jail even when they were never sentenced to incarceration.
Why it matters
The authors argue that reforms limited to “non-violent” offenses will not go far enough. They also point out that government data on women’s incarceration is still limited and inconsistent, which makes it hard to see the full picture.
Credit:
Report by Wendy Sawyer and Brian Nam-Sonenstein, originally published by the Prison Policy Initiative, October 14, 2026.
Read the full report: Women’s Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2026 – Prison Policy Initiative