Does It Cost More to Be a Female Offender? A Life-Course Study of Childhood Circumstances, Crime, Drug Abuse, and Living Conditions

Llanes-Estrada, Felipe J.; Nilsson, Anders

doi:10.1177/1557085111429783

Cited by 58 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…Although this study did not include a comparative gender analysis, existing research suggests that involvement in crime seems to cost women more than their male counterparts [36]. Since we know that rates of female imprisonment are growing, we can predict that the family-level and community-level fallout connected to this trend makes reintegration that much more important.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 95%

The Effects of Age at Prison Release on Women’s Desistance Trajectories: a Mixed-Method Analysis

Kerrison

Bachman

Paternoster

2016

J Dev Life Course Criminology

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Purpose The purpose of this study is to measure the effect that age has on women's gendered prisoner reentry experiences and the likelihood of desisting from crime and substance abuse. This study also seeks to evaluate the applicability of Paternoster and Bushway's (2009) Identity Theory of Desistance (ITD) for a contemporary, all-female sample. Methods This mixed-method study makes use of official arrest data for 218 women leaving Delaware prisons in the mid 1990s, to create group-based offending trajectory models. A representative subsample of 118 women was interviewed between 2009 and 2011 and asked to conceptualize the mechanisms that led to their desistance or persistence in offending. Results Multinomial logistic regression analyses reveal that for some of the sample, age at the time of release from prison has a positive effect on the likelihood that women will belong to a desisting trajectory group rather than the most deviant reference group. Interview narratives demonstrate that in navigating the post-incarceration gendered experiences of securing employment, family reunification, and substance abuse recovery, maturity, clarity about one's personal responsibility for linked failures, and a desire to transform one's identity were significant factors that preceded the capacity to excel in those reentry domains. Conclusions These findings lend support for the applicability of ITD for women's desistance experiences. As older women appear to express a reentry goal orientation that diverges from that of their younger counterparts, gender-responsive rehabilitation J Dev Life Course Criminology (2016) agendas must also include programming that increases the likelihood that participants will connect failures sooner so that the prosocial benefits of a healthy identity change can be enjoyed for longer.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 95%

The Effects of Age at Prison Release on Women’s Desistance Trajectories: a Mixed-Method Analysis

Kerrison

Bachman

Paternoster

2016

J Dev Life Course Criminology

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“…This lack of resources manifests itself in different ways, for example in family structure, finances, social problems and poor health (e.g. Farrington et al 2009;Aaltonen et al 2011;Estrada and Nilsson 2012). Some of the declines noted might nonetheless be regarded as somewhat surprising, not least the decline in registered crime among youths who have grown up in families characterised by long-term welfare recipiency.…”

Section: Young Offenders' Childhood Conditions and School Achievementmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Life Course of Young Male and Female Offenders

Bäckman¹,

Llanes-Estrada²,

Nilsson³

et al. 2014

CRIMIN

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Individuals' life chances are shaped by the times and events that they experience. This emphasises the need for studies that focus on staggered birth cohorts. The article presents a new longitudinal data set that includes three complete Swedish birth cohorts, born in 1965, 1975 and 1985. Comparisons between the different birth cohorts show how offending distributions among young offenders, as well as their sociodemographic backgrounds and life chances, have developed over time. The analyses of stability and change presented in the study, may serve as a point of departure for more informed discussions of the significance of societal changes for the criminality and life chances of male and female offenders.

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“…Studies have shown that female offenders who end up being dealt with by the justice system have often grown up in very difficult home conditions (e.g., Mullings, Pollock, and Crouch, 2002;Estrada and Nilsson 2012;Simpson et al, 2008; for reviews of gendered pathways, see also Belknap and Holsinger, 2006).…”

Section: The Life-course Of Female Offendersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Giordano et al 2002;Odgers et al 2008;Estrada and Nilsson 2012). In the current study, when we take experiences of drug abuse into account among those with a history of involvement in crime, we only find small differences between the sexes in levels of labour market attachment, social exclusion and mortality.…”

Section: Main Findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In a study of the adult living conditions of male and female offenders (Estrada and Nilsson 2012), we found that the situation of the female offenders was worse than that of the males, and that this was essentially associated with their more problematic backgrounds and their more extensive levels of drug abuse (see also Andersson and Torstensson 2013). This is a finding in line with research that sees drug use as an important feature of both the causes and the outcomes of persistent female criminality (Daly, 1992;Simpson et al, 2008) and is at the same time a result that life-course criminology has not paid much attention to.…”

Section: The Life-course Of Female Offendersmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Offending, drug abuse and life chances—a longitudinal study of a Stockholm birth cohort

Nilsson

Llanes-Estrada

Bäckman

2014

jssccp

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There are many factors, both empirical and theoretical, which indicate that drug abuse can play an important role in explaining the links between criminality and life chances when viewed from a life-course perspective. In this article we examine the links between crime and drug abuse and social inclusion and exclusion in adult life, and look at whether there are gender specific patterns in these regards. The Stockholm Birth Cohort database allows us to follow a birth cohort born in 1953 to age 56. The results show that drug abuse is central both to processes of continuity in and desistance from crime and to life chances in adulthood. For the adult outcomes that relate to work and health we also note a tendency towards polarization; the size of both the relative and the absolute differences between the comparison group and offenders with registered drug abuse increases over time. The same general pattern can be seen for males and females. KeywordsLife course, Social exclusion, Crime, Gender, Sweden, Longitudinal studies Among the factors that may make desistance from crime more difficult, substance abuse, with its close links to various types of crime, are central. Abuse of alcohol or drugs is something that in and of itself often restricts individuals" chances of entering and maintaining relationships and occupations, which in turn affects both levels of exposure to informal social control and individuals" routine activities. In this article we examine the links between crime and drug abuse and social inclusion and exclusion in adult life. We intend firstly to study the relationship between criminal activity and the presence of drug 2 abuse at different ages. What significance does drug abuse have for the age-crime curve? Secondly, we examine how drug abuse and crime during youth and early adulthood are linked to social inclusion, exclusion and mortality to age 56. It is widely known that involvement in crime declines with age. As a result, differences in levels of registered criminal activity become smaller in later adulthood, i.e.there is a harmonisation of crime levels across different groups of individuals. But what happens with other outcomes in adulthood? At the group level we might expect levels of inequality in living conditions to increase rather than decrease over the life course, for example, if criminally active and drug abusing individuals were compared with others. One explanation for this type of polarisation, which has been found in relation to levels of attachment to the labour market, for example, may be found in processes of cumulative disadvantage (Nilsson et al. 2013).The article continues by first discussing the relevance of drug abuse for life-course criminology. We then present our data; the Stockholm Birth Cohort study (SBC). The results are presented in two main sections; the first section present results describing the links between drug abuse and continuity in crime in early adulthood, while the second presents an analysis of living conditions in later adult life.The relevance...

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Does It Cost More to Be a Female Offender? A Life-Course Study of Childhood Circumstances, Crime, Drug Abuse, and Living Conditions

Cited by 58 publications

References 52 publications

The Effects of Age at Prison Release on Women’s Desistance Trajectories: a Mixed-Method Analysis

The Effects of Age at Prison Release on Women’s Desistance Trajectories: a Mixed-Method Analysis

The Life Course of Young Male and Female Offenders

Offending, drug abuse and life chances—a longitudinal study of a Stockholm birth cohort

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