As it stands currently, over 12,000 women are incarcerated in the federal prison system. Though that number amounts to roughly 6.8 percent of the total number of inmates, they are a population that is often overlooked—and most of them are in prison for nonviolent crimes.

For years, activists have called for reforms to the criminal justice system in the United States, and now two Democratic U.S. senators are looking to carve out their own change within the federal prison system, specifically for the women who are part of it.

On Tuesday Senators Cory Booker (D–N.J.) and Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) introduced a piece of legislation—the Dignity for Incarcerated Women Act—with the goal of making the federal prison system more humane for women who are behind bars. As reported by the Huffington Post, not only will the bill give female inmates the opportunity to stay in better contact with their families, it will also mandate that federal prisons provide free, quality tampons and pads and ban putting pregnant women in solitary confinement or shackling them during their pregnancy.

"In the larger conversation of the criminal justice system, there is one population that is left out—and it's actually the fastest growing population of prisoners in the United States of America: women who are incarcerated," Booker said during a press conference on Tuesday morning. "I've spent my time as senator visiting federal prisons, talking with formerly incarcerated women, and [visiting] with women who are [currently] incarcerated. If you listen to their truth, it brings a shame to what's happening in the U.S. and it violates our common values and principles."

Between 1980 and 2014, the overall population of women in the criminal justice system—which includes jails, state prisons, and federal prisons—rose from 26,378 in 1980 to 215,332 in 2014—a growth rate of over 700 percent. As for the international community, the United States is second only to Thailand when it comes to the rate of incarceration for women. Women in the criminal justice system are often victims of sexual or physical violence. They struggle with mental health or addiction issues. Many of them are mothers to young children.

“For too long issues affecting women have been left out of the conversation about prison reform—that ends today,” Sen. Booker told Glamour. “A majority of women behind bars are mothers and nearly three-quarters have been the victims of trauma or abuse. We must take these circumstances into account when we place women in prison facilities. That means common-sense changes such as considering where an incarcerated mother’s kids live when assigning a prison location, providing phone calls to home free of charge for primary caretakers, and banning the shackling and solitary confinement of pregnant women.”

Though Booker and Warren's legislation targets only the federal prison system (it will not impact jails and state prisons), the goal of the bill is to repair one aspect of a broken system and bring about incremental change. One of the key components of Booker and Warren's legislation is to give women the opportunity to stay better connected to their families while they complete their sentences. Not only does their bill mandate that the Federal Bureau of Prisons factors in the location of an inmate's children when determining the inmate's placement, it also opens up pathways for better communication between the inmates and their families. Among them: extending visiting hours, offering more frequent visiting hours, permitting phone calls to be made free of charge, and allowing physical contact between family members and inmates during their visits.