A growing body of scholarship faults existing risk/needs assessment models for neglecting the risk factors most relevant to women offenders. In response, a series of gender-responsive assessment models were tested for their contributions to widely used genderneutral risk needs assessments. In six of eight samples studied, subsets of the gender-responsive scales achieved statistically significant contributions to gender-neutral models. Promising results were found for the following: (a) parental stress, family support, self-efficacy, educational assets, housing safety, anger/hostility, and current mental health factors in probation samples; (b) child abuse, anger/hostility, relationship dysfunction, family support, and current mental health factors among prisoners; and (c) adult victimization, anger/hostility, educational assets, and family support among released inmates. The predictive validity of genderneutral assessments was strong in seven of eight samples studied. However, findings for both gender-neutral and gender-responsive domains suggested different treatment priorities for women from those currently put forward in correctional theory and policy.

Although qualitative research in the area of gender-responsive offending pathways has grown extensively, little quantitative work has been conducted. This study utilizes interview and survey data to assess various gender-responsive needs with an intake cohort of 313 women probationers. Using a path analytic approach, the study statistically supported three gendered pathways to women offenders' incarceration: (a) a pathway beginning with childhood victimization that contributed to historical and current forms of mental illness and substance abuse; (b) a relational pathway in which women's dysfunctional intimate relationships facilitated adult victimization, reductions in self-efficacy, and current mental illness and substance abuse; and (c) a social and human capital pathway in which women's challenges in the areas of education, family support, and self-efficacy, as well as relationship dysfunction, contributed to employment/financial difficulties and subsequent imprisonment. Support for such gendered pathways has implications for both criminological explanations of female offending and correctional interventions for women.

The needs of women offenders may be qualitatively different than the needs of male offenders. The “pathways” and “gender-responsive” perspectives of female offending have recently garnered attention in both practitioner and scholarly arenas. The pathways perspective focuses attention on the co-occurrence and effects of trauma, substance abuse, dysfunctional relationships, and mental illness on female offending, while the gender-responsive perspective also suggests that problems related to parenting, childcare, and self-concept issues are important needs of women offenders. Few studies have examined whether or not these are risk factors for poor prison adjustment. With a sample of 272 incarcerated women offenders in Missouri, we examine how each gender-responsive need is related to six- and twelve-month prison misconducts, and whether the inclusion of such needs to traditional static custody classification items increases the predictive validity of such tools. Results suggest that women offenders do, in fact, display gender-responsive risk factors in prison.

The authors review evidence of gender-responsive factors for women in prisons. Some gender-responsive needs function as risk factors in prison settings and contribute to women's maladjustment to prison; guided by these findings, the authors outline ways in which prison management, staff members, and programming can better serve female prisoners by being more gender informed. The authors suggest that prisons provide treatment and programming services aimed at reducing women's criminogenic need factors, use gendered assessments to place women into appropriate interventions and to appropriately plan for women's successful reentry into the community, and train staff members to be gender responsive.