Breaking the Cycle: What Happens Before and After Women’s Incarceration?

From March 9 to 19, 2026, the seventieth session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70) was held at the United Nations (UN) Headquarters in New York. Its priority theme focused on ensuring and strengthening equal access to justice for all women and girls, including the promotion of inclusive and equitable legal systems, the elimination of discriminatory laws, policies and practices, and addressing structural barriers.

The Agreed Conclusions (United Nations E/CN.6/2026/L.2) urged governments and all stakeholders working towards gender equality to:

“(p) Address the specific needs and circumstances of all women and girls subject to arrest, detention, prosecution, trial and sentencing, including irreversible criminal penalties, or serving as witnesses, while taking into account the linkages between discriminatory laws, violence against women and girls and increased risk of incarceration, and adopt appropriate measures to address root causes and ensure accountability for perpetrators of abuse of women and girls in detention, custody or in prison settings.”

This represents a meaningful step forward, as it brings to the center of the global agenda an issue that has remained largely overlooked: the steep increase in the imprisonment of women around the world, which often reflects earlier and systemic failures in access to justice, and the lack of understanding of the main causes underlying this trend.

It was in this context that the report Women’s Access to Justice in Ibero-America: Structural Gaps, Pathways, and People-Centered Responses, produced by the Ibero-American Alliance for Access to Justice (IBA), was launched. The report provides a comprehensive overview of how women in the region access justice, or are excluded from it, and sheds light on the multiple barriers and gaps they face throughout their justice journeys: in civil, labor, social, and criminal justice, and particularly in cases involving violence against women.

Its thematic annex, Women and Prison: Prison as the Result of Failed Pathways to Access to Justice, further examines the specific situation of women deprived of liberty. Its central argument is that imprisonment, in many cases, is not a starting point of a woman’s encounter with the justice system, but the final link in a long chain of systemic failures: including inadequate access to early legal assistance, failures to recognize and respond to contexts of violence and dependency, and insufficient consideration of the consequences of imprisonment for families and caregiving responsibilities. Every time one of these women knocked on the door of an institution, an opportunity for prevention was missed.

To better understand who these women are, where they come from, and how they envision their futures, more than 200 women deprived of liberty were interviewed across four countries—Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Costa Rica—with the support of public defenders from across the region through the Inter-American Association of Public Defender Offices (AIDEF, Asociación Interamericana de Defensorías Públicas), an IBA member.

The annex highlighted that, although the international and regional community has made diverse efforts^[1] to improve the standards to protect persons deprived of their liberty, many governments still fail to act in a timely manner, and much work remains to be done to address this issue.

This blog highlights key findings from the report alongside global data, showing that this is not merely a regional issue but a global one, and that imprisonment is, in many cases, a consequence of past institutional failures, including a disproportionate use of pretrial detention. It also underscores the need to build justice systems around people’s lived realities rather than institutions, exploring the need for alternatives to detention to reduce the impact on families, and promoting reintegration with meaning.

The numbers are rising, and behind them are stories that need to be heard

According to the World Female Imprisonment List, the number of women deprived of liberty has grown steadily since the beginning of the 21st century, and at a faster rate than male imprisonment. In Latin America, this trend is particularly acute: Uruguay records rates of 35.4 women deprived of liberty per 100,000 inhabitants, Chile 25.7, and Brazil 23.2. Most are largely associated with non-violent offenses and the extensive use of pretrial detention.

Additionally, Penal Reform International’s (PRI) Global Prison Trend 2026 report notes that around 733,000 women enter prison worldwide, many of them for non-violent offenses linked to experiences of violence or poverty.

But behind these numbers are women and stories that need to be heard: Statistics tell us how many women are in prison, but not why they got there, what they left behind, or what would have made a difference. Their experiences of violence, poverty, and care reveal the gaps in systems that often respond with punishment where support was needed. Hearing these stories is the starting point for a people-centered justice that responds to women’s real needs rather than to the offense alone.

A past marked by lack of protection

There is substantial evidence that many women deprived of liberty face exclusion, violence, and barriers to justice long before they enter prison, within a system that marginalizes them. At the global level, data from the World Justice Project shows that women face greater obstacles than men in accessing justice in 70% of the countries surveyed, and that women experience greater hardship as a result of their legal problems in more than half of those countries. The thematic annex adds an important regional dimension, revealing that more than 60% of the women interviewed reported prior experiences of violence, and that 59% have or have had close relatives in prison, pointing to repeated contact with the criminal justice system within their immediate familial and social circles.

Taken together, these findings illustrate how disadvantages can accumulate across women’s justice pathways. Barriers to accessing protection, legal assistance, and effective remedies at earlier stages can leave women’s underlying needs and experiences of violence unaddressed. Over time, this cumulative lack of protection can deepen their vulnerability and, in turn, create conditions that contribute to their criminalization and imprisonment. Access to justice is therefore compromised well before women come into contact with the criminal justice system, which underscores the need for people-centered responses that address women’s needs at the earliest points of their justice journeys.

This reality is not unique to Latin America. In Africa, more than 24 human rights organizations have highlighted that women are frequently imprisoned for offenses directly related to violence they experienced at the hands of their partners or family members. Reinforcing the need to understand women’s imprisonment not only through the offense for which they are convicted, but also in the context of the circumstances that preceded it.

Understanding these contexts (the geographic, economic, and structural barriers women face) is essential for designing targeted responses to each situation. Even when framed as formally neutral, the application of criminal law can produce differentiated effects based on gender and socioeconomic conditions.

This calls for gender-responsive assessment tools and specific training for all justice actors who come into contact with women throughout their justice pathways. Such measures would enable these actors to identify women’s needs, experiences of violence and risk factors at the earliest possible stage, and to respond in ways that prevent the accumulation of disadvantage that can lead to criminalization and imprisonment.

Pretrial detention: a disproportionate response

The excessive use of pretrial detention and disproportionate sentences continues to fall heavily on women.

PRI reports^[2] that although men in Africa are more likely to be imprisoned overall, women are more likely to be held before trial. In 2023, 45% of women in prison in Africa had not been sentenced, compared with 36% of men.^[3] PRI links this gap to three main factors:

1. Women are less able to pay bail.
2. They face stigma from justice professionals as well as from their families and support networks.
3. They often know less about their legal rights.

In Latin America, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC^[4]) identifies the automatic and disproportionate use of pretrial detention as one of the main drivers of the rising female prison population in Latin America and a serious barrier to access to justice.

Decisions on pretrial detention are typically ordered based on the formal severity of the alleged offense or the potential sentence, bypassing individualized analysis of coercive contexts, the absence of a prior criminal record, socioeconomic conditions, or caregiving responsibilities. Failing to account for these circumstances can result in differentiated and disproportionate impacts on women.^[5]

A gender- and socio-economic responsive approach requires meaningfully considering individual circumstances at every stage of the justice process, with pretrial detention used only as a measure of last resort and where strictly necessary and proportionate.

This calls for changes, both in legislation and in practice, that are grounded in this understanding, rather than in flawed premises that overlook each person’s individual circumstances and vulnerabilities. Examples from Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Spain, included in the thematic annex, illustrate how legal and policy frameworks can promote greater use of alternatives to detention, help reduce pretrial detention and the unnecessary incarceration of women for non-violent offenses.

The impact on families and the need for alternatives

The impact of a woman’s incarceration does not only affect her. According to the thematic report, 77% of the incarcerated women interviewed have children, and in many cases, they were the primary caregivers before their detention.

Their imprisonment therefore has direct consequences for their families, especially their children. For this reason, when a woman’s life is analyzed through a gender perspective, with an individualized assessment of her circumstances, deprivation of liberty should, where appropriate, be a measure of last resort. Women whose children were present during their arrest were asked what they would have changed. One wished she had been allowed to call relatives to collect her daughter. Another wanted officers “to ring the doorbell, not break into the home, not enter violently during the raid.”

In this regard, it is necessary to propose changes that take these considerations into account^[6] and that do not start from a flawed premise, one that fails to apply gender-sensitive tools or to understand each individual situation. The thematic annex highlights examples from Guatemala, Mexico, and Peru, where gender-focused approaches have been incorporated in prison management and reintegration efforts.^[7]

Looking ahead: reintegration with meaning

Reintegration is a stage that is often overlooked, yet it has major consequences for women’s futures: The surveys presented in the thematic annex show that, when women deprived of liberty were asked what changes they would propose to improve access to justice and reintegration, their responses were wide-ranging but converged around several concrete needs: employment opportunities, training, psychological support, more respectful institutional treatment, and greater contact with their families.

“To leave with a job and more courses.”

“That they be more humane, and that there be more psychological support.”

A report from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) reinforces these findings: women deprived of liberty make the most of available training opportunities despite the adversities they face, demonstrating a clear demand for rehabilitation and reintegration opportunities. The challenge lies not in a lack of motivation, but in systems that often fail to provide meaningful rehabilitation opportunities.

Justice systems must respond to this demand and remove the structural barriers that prevent many women from accessing education, skills training, and support while incarcerated. Reintegration cannot begin at the prison gate; it must be planned from the moment a woman enters the system, with a clear pathway towards the life she will return to.

This also requires genuine inter-institutional coordination. Since many of these women are the primary caregivers of their children, justice systems cannot work in isolation. Coordination with social services is essential throughout the reintegration process, including facilitating access to housing, family reunification, protection measures against gender-based violence, and access to social programs. Without this coordination, release from prison risks simply marking the beginning of a new set of unmet needs.

Conclusion

The findings presented in the thematic annex point to a consistent pattern: in many cases, women’s imprisonment cannot be understood solely through the offense that brought them into contact with the criminal justice system. It must be understood in light of the broader circumstances and justice pathways that preceded it. Many of the women arrive in prison after years of unmet legal needs, unrecognized violence, and unanswered calls for help. Often, institutions failed to respond at critical moments: in the community, in the courthouse, in the shelter, in the public defender’s office. Each of these encounters was a missed opportunity: the system crossed paths with these women long before they reached prison, but failed to turn that contact into an opportunity for prevention. In many cases, prison becomes the final, visible outcome of a much longer chain of less visible failures.

We need more data and more research. But evidence can only drive change when justice systems listen to what it reveals and respond to people’s realities.

A people-centered justice approach demands that we take this chain seriously and intervene at every link where it can be broken. It means investing in early legal assistance before situations escalate, training justice actors to recognize contexts of violence and coercion and gender-specific vulnerabilities, replacing the automatic use of pretrial detention with individualized, gender-responsive assessments and greater consideration of alternatives, and building reintegration and rehabilitation pathways that treat women as full rights-holders, not simply as risks to be managed.

The women interviewed for the report were clear about what they need: work, training, humane treatment, and connection with their families. These are not extraordinary demands. They are the basic conditions for a dignified life. In many cases, these conditions were out of their reach long before their first contact with the criminal justice system.

People-centered justice is not a slogan. It is a commitment to build justice systems that see people first, before seeing offenses and sentences. That means seeing their histories, circumstances, needs, and rights.

References

^[1] Relevant international standards and instruments include the Bangkok Rules, the Tokyo Rules, the Nelson Mandela Rules, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the Belém do Pará Convention, and the Istanbul Convention.

^[2] Penal Reform International, Non-custodial sanctions and measures in Africa: A Comparative Study (2026), https://www.penalreform.org/resource/non-custodial-sanctions-and-measures-in-africa-a/.

^[3] United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Prison Matters 2025, Data Matters brief,, www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/prison/Prison_brief_2025.pdf, cited in Penal Reform International, Non-custodial sanctions and measures in Africa: A comparative study (2026).

^[4] Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Access to justice for women and girls in Latin America and the Caribbean (2026).

^[5] Naciones Unidas, Comité para la Eliminación de la Discriminación contra la Mujer (CEDAW), Recomendación General No. 33 sobre el acceso de las mujeres a la justicia, CEDAW/C/GC/33, 3 de agosto de 2015, https://www.acnur.org/fileadmin/Documentos/BDL/2016/10710.pdf.

Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (2015), Caso Velásquez Paiz y otros vs. Guatemala. sentencia de 19 de noviembre de 2015 https://www.prisonstudies.org/sites/default/files/resources/downloads/world_female_imprisonment_list_6th_edition.pdf.

^[6] See “Non-custodial alternatives for low-income women caregivers convicted of minor offenses to reduce the social impact of incarceration in Colombia (2023-ongoing),” https://www.sdg16.plus/policies/incarceration-alternatives-for-women-heads-of-households-colombia/.

^[7] Examples are included in the thematic annex: Guatemala, Modelo de Gestión Penitenciaria, Centro de Rehabilitación y Reinserción Social Fraijanes I, https://agn.gt/nuevo-modelo-de-gestion-penitenciaria-reinsercion-social-para-reclusas/; Peru, Resolución de Presidencia N.º 119-2016-INPE/P, “Atención Integral y Tratamiento Penitenciario para Mujeres Procesadas o Sentenciadas en Establecimientos Penitenciarios,” https://www.gob.pe/institucion/inpe/normas-legales/3152243-119-2016-inpe-p; Mexico. Programa Reinserta, https://reinserta.org/.