Therefore women suffer accordingly, they say. There are a wide range of institutions that incarcerate women and the conditions vary. Some women's prisons look like small college campuses which may remind one of the historical legacy of the reformatory movement. Bedford Hills state prison in New York and Alderson Federal Prison in West Virginia are two such institutions. Appearances, however, are deceptive.
Many institutions have no pretenses and are notoriously overcrowded and inadequate.
The California Institution for Women at Frontera houses twenty-five hundred women in a facility built for 1,011. Overcrowding sometimes means that women who are being held for trivial offenses are incarcerated in maximum security institutions for lack of other facilities. Women's prisons are often particularly ill-equipped and poorly financed. They have fewer medical, educational and vocational facilities than men's prisons. Medical treatment is often available, innappropriate, and inconsistant.