Elizabeth Swavola, one of the authors of the report, said women who become incarcerated are “encountering a system that was created for the majority of people who are in the criminal justice system, who are men. “Once a rarity, women are now held in jails in nearly every county — a stark contrast to 1970, when almost three-quarters of counties held not a single woman in jail,” the report said. The increase of women in US jails has far surpassed the growth of male prisoners, study said, which is linked to trauma, sexual violence and mental health issues 
 
 Women held in local jails represent the fastest growing population of incarcerated people in the US, according to a new study. Much of the increase in the number of jailed women occurred in counties with fewer than 250,000 people, according to the study, places where just 1,700 women had been incarcerated in 1970. The troubles caused by the arrest of a woman responsible for supporting a family can sometimes never be undone, said Laurie R. Garduque, the director of justice reform for the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which funds the Safety and Justice Challenge, whose mission is to create fairer, more effective local justice systems.
– The number of women locked up in jails around the country is increasing at a level not matched by the male jail population, according to a report released by the MacArthur Foundation and Vera Institute. The Guardian reports there were 14 times more women in US jails in 2014 than in 1970. Most of the increase comes from jails in small, rural counties, where incarceration rates for women nearly doubled between 2000 and 2014, according to the New York Times. The number of women in jail in the most populous counties actually declined during that time. One of the report's authors tells NPR the reason may be that rural counties lack resources besides jail for women with mental illnesses and other issues. The report found about one-third of jailed women have a serious mental illness—approximately double the rate for jailed men. Women are also two-thirds of the victims of sexual abuse by jail staff despite being only 13% of the jail population. For these and other reasons, the report's authors conclude jailed women are more vulnerable than their male counterparts. Furthermore, they are largely jailed for minor infractions that don't impact public safety, such as failing to appear in court for a citation. There were about 110,000 women in jail on misdemeanor charges in 2014. Meanwhile, the number of men in jail—not to mention the overall crime rate—has been declining.