A Summary of Research, Practice, and Guiding Principles for Women Offenders

Abstract

Women now represent a significant proportion of all offenders under criminal justice supervision in the United States. Numbering more than 1 million in 2001, women offenders make up 17 percent of all offenders under some form of correctional sanction. To improve policy and practice regarding women offenders in corrections, the National Institute of Corrections undertook a 3-year project-titled Gender-Responsive Strategies: Research, Practice, and Guiding Principles for Women Offenders-to collect and summarize multidisciplinary research and practitioner expertise on gender-responsive strategies. The final report summarizes the following: • The characteristics of women in correctional settings. • The ways in which gender makes a difference in current criminal justice practice. • Multidisciplinary research and theory on women's lives that have significant implications for managing women in the criminal justice system.

Moving ahead: Five essential elements for working effectively with girls

“…The "gender-responsive" or "gender-specific" literature, rooted in a feminist perspective, emphasizes the unique experiences of being a girl in the United States and the different pathways to delinquency among boys and girls. The authors of this literature assert that girls need qualitatively different types of programs and services to adequately address their delinquent behavior (see for example, Belknap, 2001;Belknap & Holsinger, 1998;Bloom, 2000;Bloom, Owen, & Covington, 2003;Chesney-Lind, 1997). The "what works" literature, emanating from the work of Canadian psychologists, synthesizes quantitative research on correctional and juvenile justice programs and has promulgated principles of effective intervention that are associated with a reduction in recidivism (see for example, Andrews, Zinger, Bonta, Gendreau, & Cullen, 1990;Cullen & Gendreau, 2000;Latessa, Cullen, & Gendreau, 2002;Lipsey & Wilson, 1998;Sherman et al, 1997).…”

A Comparison of Female Delinquents: The Impact of Child Maltreatment Histories on Risk and Need Characteristics among a Missouri Sample

“…Inadequate interpersonal relationships on the other hand, can lead a child to behave in an antisocial manner and even resort to violence to cope with stress and trauma. In addition, relationships seem to play an even larger role in the life of girls than of boys [47].…”

The Impact of Incarceration on Greek Female Prisoners’ Self-reported Health Status

“…In Greece and other European countries, the common reasons of female imprisonment are drug-trafficking, financial reasons and theft/ robbery, while the violent crimes and murders are observed more frequently in the male prison population or in women incarcerated in USA [11,31,35,[46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54].…”