Freeman Klopott, The Examiner
2008-07-14 07:00:00.0
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WASHINGTON -

The number of women getting entangled with the law is rising in at least two Washington-area jurisdictions, even as the number of men being arrested falls, reflecting a national trend two decades in the making, police said.

Since at least 2006, the number of men arrested in the first half of each year in the District of Columbia has dropped by nearly 2,000 as the number of women has climbed by more than 300, metro police said.

There are still many more men arrested than women — 19,757 compared with 5,381 in the first half of this year.

In Prince George’s County, where arrest statistics weren’t immediately available, Maj. Dan Dusseau, who heads the Criminal Investigation Division, said he’s watched as the number of women being clasped in cuffs has risen in recent years.

County police spokeswoman Sharon Taylor declined to comment on the causes for the climb in women being arrested, saying the issues behind it are broader than the work performed by the police department.

But “it’s not isolated to one county or region. This is a national issue,” Taylor said, and compared it to other issues such as gang activity, which also crosses borders.

For years, federal statistics have shown that women have increasingly become involved in crime.

Across the country, women continue to comprise a significantly smaller portion of the prison population than men, but in the past two decades the increase in the number of women behind bars has outpaced men, even as the total population exploded.

According to U.S. Department of Justice statistics, between 1985 and 1995 the total number of male and female inmates rose from 732,000 to 1,550,700 as drug law prosecution intensified.

By 2006, the percentage of inmates who were female had reached 7.2 percent, up from 5.5 percent in 1985.

Justice Department studies contribute the rise of female criminals to several factors, but perhaps the most prevalent is that many have been abused. In a 2002 national survey, 36 percent of female inmates reported being sexually or physically abused.

 fklopott@dcexaminer.com