Women tend to get lighter sentences than men for the same crimes, and are acquitted more often, yet few people call attention to this gender gap (2) (3). Men get 14x longer sentences according to the PRB and black men are impacted the most by sexism and racism (2) (3) when it comes to incarceration.
Instead of speaking out against this massive gender gap, some groups in the US (and UK) aim to take it even further and keep women out of prison altogether or introduce biased policies. Some things are reasonable, like laws against shackling pregnant women. Other ideas... not so much. The Michigan Women’s Justice and Clemency Project called for the release of ten female prisoners they said are actually the victims of abusive husbands and boyfriends, although there is no evidence of this, and there's no way to prove otherwise since most of the women were convicted over a decade ago.
"51 per cent of women leaving prison will be reconvicted within a year, and among those on short sentences of less than 12 months, this rises to 62 per cent.... 81 per cent are jailed for a non-violent offence. They make up [a] small proportion of the UK prison population." (source) Allegedly judges have been told to be more lenient on female criminals because "equality isn't working" and women shouldn't be subjected to the same horrors of prison that men are. Sounds a bit like a double standard.
The prison population is 93% male. There are now 7.2 million Americans incarcerated, on probation, or parole. This is an increase of more than 290 percent since 1980 (350% over 40 years).
Many prisoners are not serving sentences for violent crimes. 7.9% of sentenced prisoners in federal prisons (as of September 30, 2009) were in for violent crimes. 60% of incarcerated drug users didn't start until after their first arrest, so not only would decriminalizing certain drugs lower the prison population by a significant amount, it would likely be helpful for society as a whole. Changing how things work is also a positive step forward since drug users are rarely rehabilitated properly. Despite the "war on drugs" the US government has been accused of drug trafficking and contributing to the amount of drugs in existence, which could falsely inflate certain statistics.
"Several years ago, a criminologist named Todd Clear studied communities in Tallahassee, Florida, and found that when a large enough proportion of people from a given neighborhood is locked up, the impact on the community can be dangerously destabilizing. Families are sundered, ex-cons with felonies on their records are excluded from gainful employment, and a certain culture begins to take hold. Children who have a father or brother in prison are statistically more likely to commit crimes. In Clear’s view, imprisonment 'now produces the very social problems on which it feeds.' [...] the recidivism rate for male juvenile offenders who are detained in New York State is an astonishing 81 percent. " (source)
The National Research Council Committee on Data and Research for Policy on Illegal Drugs published its findings in 2001 on the efficacy of the drug war. The NRC Committee found that existing studies on efforts to address drug usage and smuggling, from U.S. military operations to eradicate coca fields in Colombia, to domestic drug treatment centers, have all been inconclusive, if the programs have been evaluated at all: "The existing drug-use monitoring systems are strikingly inadequate to support the full range of policy decisions that the nation must make.... It is unconscionable for this country to continue to carry out a public policy of this magnitude and cost without any way of knowing whether and to what extent it is having the desired effect."[120] The study, though not ignored by the press, was ignored by top-level policy makers, leading Committee Chair Charles Manski to conclude "the drug war has no interest in its own results".[121]
More information on the War On Drugs and why it's not working: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs
More information on prison and related topics:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/11/mark-ciavarella-jr_n_924324.html
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/five-reasons-cops-want-to-legalize-marijuana-20130627
https://nplusonemag.com/issue-13/politics/raise-the-crime-rate/