At Huron Valley, about half the guards are men. At Crane prison, approximately eighty percent of the staff is male and there are open dormitories divided into cubicles. In one section the cubicle walls are only four feet high and there are no doors or curtains on any cubicles anywhere at Crane. The officers' desks are right next to the bathroom and the bathroom doors must be left open at all times. Male guards are also allowed to do body shakedowns where they run their hands all over the women's bodies.
Incarceration has serious and particular ramifications for women.
Eighty percent of women entering state prisons are mothers. By contrast sixty percent of men in state prisons are fathers and less than half of them have custodial responsibility. These mothers have to undergo the intense pain of forced separation from their children. They are often the sole caretakers of their children and were the primary source of financial and emotional support. Their children are twice as likely to end up in foster care than the children of male prisoners.