Women in law enforcement and corrections

SIGNIFICANCE: Women first entered law enforcement and corrections work in the United States during the early nineteenth century, but significant numbers of women were not given the full responsibilities and opportunities available to men until after the passage of federal civil rights legislation in the late twentieth century. The numbers of women in law enforcement and corrections then grew dramatically, only to level off as women in those professions encountered workplace discrimination and harassment.

Introduction

The roles and scope of women in law enforcement and corrections have changed significantly since the beginning of the twentieth century. Women began working in policing during the mid-nineteenth century, but their duties confined them primarily to clerical work and to working with other women and children. Since the US Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Opportunity Employment Act of 1972, women have entered police patrol work and have become police officers with job functions similar to their male counterparts.

In the early nineteenth century, the reformatory movement in corrections opened new avenues of employment for women as matrons in prisons because they were viewed as having the abilities necessary to redirect female offenders to the types of lives they were expected to live after their release. As in policing and other law-enforcement positions, however, women now enter and work in the same kinds of corrections jobs—with the same security, benefits, and salaries—as their male counterparts. Finally, with the rise in the use of security officers in the private sector, increasing numbers of women are finding employment as security personnel in restaurants, shopping malls, and other locations.

Policing

In 1845, the New York City Police Department became the first department officially to employ women. However, the women it hired served as matrons and were essentially social workers who assisted the women and children with whom the department dealt. Their hiring met opposition from male police officers and citizens, but by 1885, other cities were also beginning to utilize women officers as matrons.

In 1893, the mayor of Chicago officially appointed Marie Owens, the widow of a Chicago police officer, as the first woman “patrolman” with powers of arrest. Seventeen years later, Los Angeles made Alice Stebbins Wells the first woman to be classified as a “policewoman.” Wells, who had previously worked as a social worker, was initially appointed for prevention and protection principles related to youth. Although she was later given powers of arrest, her duties were limited to enforcing laws in places such as dance halls, movie theaters, amusement parks and arcades, and other places of recreation frequented by women and children. It would be many years before limitations placed on women in policing would be eased through US Supreme Court decisions and legislation.

The 1970s was the decade that set in motion the modern era for women in policing. In Reed v. Reed (1971), the Supreme Court ruled that police departments that discriminated on the basis of sex were in violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Equal Rights Amendment and its subsequent Equal Opportunity Employment Act of 1972 provided for the advancement of women in policing and other law-enforcement positions. In 1972, two women successfully completed Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) training, New York City’s police began hiring and training women for patrol duty, and Pennsylvania’s state police began giving women increased duties.

After the 1970s, the numbers of sworn female police officers increased dramatically from a handful across the United States to more than 91,000 in 2022. However, despite these advances, the total number of women in law enforcement remains small, and their progress has been slow. Although women constituted 56 percent of the nation’s workforce in 2021, they held only about 13 percent of sworn law-enforcement positions in the country. Another indication of the lack of overall progress being made by women is a statistic reported by CNN in 2022: of the more than 18,000 police agencies nationwide, only about 3 percent had female department heads. An exception to this statistic is in the District of Columbia, where some notable federal and local agencies, such as the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the DC Metropolitan Police Department, and US Marshals Service, have been headed by women. However, the barrier popularly known as the “glass ceiling” is especially evident in the majority of law enforcement agencies and departments. To remedy this, 150 police agencies in the United States and Canada pledged in 2022 to the number of women in supervising positions by 30 percent by 2030.

In 2017, a woman was named the acting chief of the US Border Patrol for the first time in the agency's history. Still, one of the chief's reported missions upon her appointment was to recruit more women to serve as agents, as the Border Patrol has been cited as one of the federal law-enforcement agencies with the smallest number of women in its ranks (about 5 percent over decades).

Studies spanning decades have shown, however, that increasing the numbers of women in police departments would significantly decrease police violence, use of excessive force, and the escalation of potentially violent situations. Researchers have found that these outcomes are expected because women behave less aggressively than men, are more prone to use dialogue before resulting to force, and view police work as a public service rather than a position of control and authority. In addition, studies have shown that an increase of women in the work force can lead to an increase of reported violent crimes against women and a decrease in domestic violence.

Barriers to Women in Policing

Possible explanations for the low numbers of women found in law-enforcement positions, especially those of higher rank, may be rooted in the continuing problems of disparate practices concerning societal gender bias, work assignments, and sexual harassment. Once on the job, women in law enforcement often face discrimination, harassment, and intimidation from their male colleagues, especially as they move up the ranks.

Despite more than a century of evidence showing that women are as capable of police work as men, widespread bias in recruitment policies, selection practices, hiring, and promotions keep their numbers disproportionately low. Although discriminatory size requirements were discarded during the early 1970s, modern entrance tests continue to bar qualified women from entering policing. Many mandatory physical agility tests have a significant negative effect on the representation of sworn female officers, as most departmental entry exams overemphasize physical strength, thereby disqualifying many suitable female applicants.

Another obstacle is the stereotype of policing as a male job because of its association with crime and danger. The prevailing attitudes of policing styles have focused on use of force with emphasis on paramilitary environments. In these conditions, male officers perceive their female counterparts as weak and unimposing, unable to carry out the duties required by their positions. Thus, the primary obstacle that women must overcome is the attitudes of male officers. However, despite negative male ideas about women police officers, time and experience have shown that male and female officers are equally effective in their activities—as measured by productivity on patrol, commitment to law-enforcement organizations, and performance evaluations.

Women employed in policing often encounter hostile workplaces, facing sexual harassment on the job. Despite legislation and departmental policies prohibiting sexual harassment in the workplace, women in law enforcement face such problems in many agencies across America. Found mainly in smaller departments, the “good old boy” system exemplifies stereotypical attitudes and often allows such misconduct. One of the major reasons cited for the high turnover rate found among female officers is sexual harassment.

Notwithstanding the barriers that female officers confront, they bring to policing a style that relies more on communication skills than physical force. The citizenry they serve sees them as more respectful, and by using tactics and techniques that defuse potentially violent situations, female officers often successfully resolve situations that might otherwise lead to serious injury or death. Finally, because of their emphasis on communication, female officers are also able to respond more effectively to cases of domestic violence, which represent almost one-half of all violent crime calls to police agencies.

Corrections Work

The advancement of women into policing jobs was actually established by female correctional matrons. Between 1822 and 1832, the first women were hired as jail matrons and prison guards, thus paving the way for female police officers by legitimizing women working within the criminal justice field.

The background and history of women working in corrections is similar to that of women in policing. Impacted by women’s reform groups, such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the American Female Moral Reform Society, female jail and prison matrons were essentially social workers who were interested in the morality of women arrested and detained for prostitution and other forms of commercial vice, as well as wayward juveniles. Matrons were intended to serve as role models who could influence female inmates and young women in the “ways of being a lady.” Their work often required them to lead classes on such domestic skills as cooking, cleaning, and sewing.

From the beginning, as with policing, women in corrections were relegated to lower positions of authority. Female correctional officers did not hold the same pay grades as men in similar positions, and the facilities in which they served were often below the standard of those used by men. The pay of correctional matrons was similar to that of domestic servants. Like domestic servants, they worked long shifts with few days off. Moreover, they often lived and worked alongside the inmates they were charged to supervise.

As the reformatory movement in corrections rose and fell in the early twentieth century, women worked as correctional officers for the same pragmatic reasons as men. No longer focused on the ideals of reform, women went into corrections for job security and steady paychecks. Female corrections officers were not concerned with reforming their charges. Instead, they became custodial employees whose main duties revolved around prevention of violence within, and escape from, jail and prison facilities.

Corrections has historically been the most sex-segregated and male-dominated component of the criminal justice system. However, since the late twentieth century, and because of the same laws and decrees that affected police, correctional staffs have become more gender integrated. Now, female officers are allowed to work in prisons for both women and men. This advancement is not without problems, however. As with policing, male colleagues often do not take female officers seriously. Consequently, female officers feel a constant need to prove their abilities and often confront sexual harassment by inmates and male officers alike.

Work in corrections also presents problems of cultural differences. Corrections officers often work mostly in rural environments where most lockup facilities are located, and they supervise inmates from urban areas with whom they share little in common. Correctional work is particularly difficult for working mothers, as the shifts are long and often rotating, and involuntary overtime work is common. Correctional officers cannot easily leave their jobs for personal emergencies, especially as most correctional facilities operate shorthanded or with minimal staff supervision.

Many women work in the subfield of corrections known as “intermediate sanctions,” which is better suited to their schedules. This field includes the supervision of all persons in the correctional pipeline who instead of being incarcerated in jails or prisons are housed in halfway houses, boot camps, and the like. The most common jobs for women in this field are as probation officers who monitor the conduct and behavior of criminal offenders (both juvenile and adult) serving probation terms in lieu of incarceration. Some jurisdictions combine probation with parole, requiring officers to monitor the reintegration of criminal offenders into communities during their conditional release from prison.

As in policing, many correctional experts have observed that female corrections officers have better listening and communication skills than men. They can have a calming effect on prisoners, are less confrontational, and are better than men at exercising control without using force.

Security Work

A variety of private police services, including the private detective and security businesses, have arisen to compete with traditional law enforcement. Moreover, the US Department of Labor reports that this twelve-billion-dollar-a-year industry, which employs more than ten million men and women in such protective services as store detectives, undercover investigators, and security guards, is rapidly growing to meet increasing demand. This is also an area of law enforcement in which women are more welcome than in the traditional areas of policing and corrections, as women have a greater ability than men to “blend in with the crowd” with which they work.

Conclusion

Most modern agencies attempt to recruit women, and all positions are at least theoretically open to them. The adage that “everything old is new again” now applies, as law-enforcement recruiters are returning to the traditional sources of female officers from the nineteenth century, attempting to attract social workers and other caregivers from whom the first police matrons were drawn in the early nineteenth century.

However, the numbers of women in general policing or corrections or in supervisory roles has not increased significantly, as these occupations remain traditionally filled by men with women having to continually prove themselves in their everyday work experiences. For women in law enforcement, the “glass ceiling” remains firmly in place, and until women are fully integrated into the profession, incidents of sexual harassment and obstacles in employment, promotions, and other advancements will likely remain in place.

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