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Usually the news concerning African Americans and the U.S. prison population is disheartening. But according to a new report by The Sentencing Project, the percentage of African-American women compared to white women behind bars dropped nearly in half between 2000 and 2009. The Sentencing Project is a nonprofit organization that works for fair sentencing and prison reform.

“The good news in this report is that [though these are] problems that many people viewed as seemingly intractable, it appears that we can make progress as a society on those issues,” Marc Mauer, Executive Director of The Sentencing Project, told The Huffington Post. 

According to the “The Changing Racial Dynamics of Women’s Incarceration” report, which is based on data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 2000, black women were incarcerated in state and federal prisons at six times the rate of white women. But a little less than a decade later — in 2009 — that ratio had declined by 53 percent. This drastic decrease was, says the report, a result of both declining incarceration of African-American women and rising incarceration of white women.

There were reduced incarceration and arrests among African-American women who committed drug offenses and violent crimes. “At the same time, the project found rising imprisonment of white women for similar misconduct,” writes HuffPo. “The rates are far too high for any society, but nonetheless the numbers are going in the right direction,” Mauer explained to HuffPo.

In general, according to the Sentencing Project more whites–men and women–are in prison and it may be due to meth drug arrests. According to the New York Times (via Business Insider), the report also found a major spike in incarceration rates for white men and women. The rate for white women increased 47.1 percent for white women and 8.5 percent for white men. Possible contributors to this shift, Mauer said, are decreasing arrest rates for blacks, “the rising number of whites and Hispanics serving mandatory sentences for methamphetamine abuse, and socioeconomic shifts that have disproportionately affected white women.”

Overall, women currently constitute seven percent of the prison population, according to the study.

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For some women, there is nothing they wouldn’t do for their man. Although love should be unconditional, many women feel the need to prove their love to a man, even if it means compromising their beliefs, safety or even their freedom to show them what a “down A$$ chick” they are. However, a man who truly loves you will never ask you to do anything you’re uncomfortable doing in order to prove your love to him.  Your love and devotion should simply be enough, and couples who share true love will never have to prove anything to each other. However, if your man begins a sentence with, “If you loved me, you’d…,” run because most likely, nothing good can come of it. Showing your love shouldn’t be shameful, painful, humiliating or illegal, and while you may think you’re assuaging his insecurities, you’re actually just allowing him to manipulate you. Think there is no limit to showing him how far you’ll go to prove your love? Think again. Here are 10 things no woman should do for a man, simply because he asks her to.

By Brande Victorian

Recounting details of one of the most disturbing murders of the 1990s, Omaima Nelson, 43, a woman who killed, dismembered, and cooked her husband, was denied parole yesterday. According to the LA Times, testimony from a psychiatrist in the earlier trial said Nelson put on red shoes, a red hat, and red lipstick before chopping up and cooking her husband’s body. She said she prepared his ribs like in a restaurant and said out loud, “It’s so sweet.”

At the parole hearing, Nelson denied the claim: “I swear to God I did not eat any part of him. I am not a monster.” But when Commissioner Cynthia Fritz then asked, “What was your purpose in cooking him?” Nelson did not answer.

Orange County Senior Deputy Dist. Atty. Randy Pawloski, who was an original prosecutor in the case, personally attended the hearing at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, stating that Nelson had a pattern of using sex as a con game, and that her games grew increasingly violent over the years. The Egyptian beauty reportedly met William Nelson in 1991 in a bar playing pool. Within weeks they were married, and shortly after Omaima said her husband began to show a violent side. She claimed he was trying to strangle her when she hit him with a lamp, stabbed him with scissors, and killed him. The marriage only lasted three weeks.

“If I didn’t defend my life, I would have been dead. I’m sorry it happened, but I’m glad I lived,” she said.

“I’m sorry I dismembered him.”

Nelson said she was not the same person she was 20 years ago and simply wanted to live the “good life God meant.” She said she had “looked for love in all the wrong places… but now I value my integrity and my journey… I have a strong desire to help others.”

Visits she shared with another deceased former husband, a man in his 70s whom she married while in prison, were cited as evidence of her change of heart. “We had three-day conjugal visits. There were knives in the kitchen. He never felt threatened or endangered in any way,” she said. “I loved him so much.”

William Nelson’s daughter, Margaret, was not moved, reading a written statement about not having her father at her wedding, or being able to introduce him to her 8-week-old daughter. She stated she was at the hearing to “return some human dignity to the man who was my father.”