Reporter Fox Butterfield reports in the New York Times on the growing numbers of growing numbers of female prisoners:

Nationally, from 1993 through 2002, while overall crime was falling, the number of women arrested rose 14.1 percent, according to the F.B.I.'s Uniform Crime Report. In the same period, the number of men arrested fell 5.9 percent.

Some individual crimes show even more striking disparities. While the number of men arrested on charges of aggravated assault fell 12.3 percent in the decade, the number of women arrested on the same charge rose 24.9 percent. Drug arrests rose 34.5 percent for men in this period, 50 percent for women. And the number of women arrested on embezzlement charges increased 80.5 percent, actually surpassing the number of men arrested on the same charges, the only crime for which that is true.

Similarly, from 1990 through 2002, the number of women in state and federal prisons jumped 121 percent, to 97,491 from 44,065, said Allen J. Beck, the chief prison demographer for the Bureau of Justice Statistics. By comparison, the number of men in state and federal prisons rose 84 percent in that period, to 1,343,164 from 729,840.

What's behind the trend? Butterfield tries to explain.