Canada: More than 60 per cent of incarcerated women are mothers — Listen

The fastest growing prison population in Canada is racialized women. The trend may be connected to rising poverty rates and the criminalization of attempts to cope with poverty.Despite a reduction in crime in the last 20 years in Canada, many women attempting to make ends meet for their families end up colliding with the prison system. In Canada, women’s prisons are filling up. In fact, the fastest-growing prison population in Canada is racialized women. More than one in three women in federal custody are Indigenous. And the percentage of South Asian women and African Canadian women in custody is also disproportionately high.One of the reasons the women’s prison population is rising is poverty.