Working with Female Offenders

A Gender-Sensitive Approach

Katherine van Wormer

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781118012130
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Social Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Praise for Working with Female Offenders

"Encyclopedic in scope and full of very relevant work drawn from the fields of biology, psychology, criminology, and corrections, this book is a must-read for those working with girl and women offenders." —Meda Chesney-Lind, Professor, Women's Studies University of Hawaii at Manoa

"In this timely and thoughtful book, van Wormer provides a gender-sensitive lens through which the reader can examine pathways to female criminality, a global perspective on female crime and punishment, and innovative treatment approaches. This book is a must-have for any student or professional who wishes to truly impact and empower the lives of female offenders." —David W. Springer, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, School of Social Work The University of Texas at Austin

"This book is timely in light of promising developments that are taking place at every level of the criminal justice system. It is a must-read for policymakers, practitioners, academics, and students in criminal justice, social work, and other related fields." —Barbara E. Bloom, Professor, Criminology and Criminal Justice Studies Sonoma State University, California

The first book to combine elements from the social work, counseling, and crimi- nology fields to create a framework tailored to working with female offenders

Taking into account the special needs of girls and women within a system designed by men for male offenders, Working with Female Offenders offers counselors, correctional officers, lawyers, probation officers—in short, anyone who works in some capacity with female offenders–an evidence-based, gentler approach for working effectively and successfully with girls and women in trouble with the law.

Working with Female Offenders provides coverage devoted to the nature of female crime and to the institutional settings in which much of the female-specific programming is designed to take place. This timely volume equips professionals with proven counseling strategies tailored to fit this population.

Practical guidelines are included for case management interventions, teaching skills of communication and assertiveness, and anger and stress management for female offender populations, as well as:

• A strengths/empowerment/restorative framework for counseling women in crisis
• Narratives from personal interviews with female offenders and correctional counselors
• Discussion of controversial topics such as prison homosexuality, AIDS in prison, girls in gangs, and women on death row
• Examples of successful, innovative programs for female offenders from the United States and abroad

Working with Female Offenders addresses the unique challenges of female offenders and those who treat them, and provides a much needed addition to the literature on innovative programming for female offenders.

Part I

GENDER-SENSITIVE VERSUS GENDER-NEUTRAL

Chapter 1

A GENDERED APPROACH

In emphasizing voice, I have tried to work against the dangers I see in the current tendency to reduce psychology to biology or to culture, to see people as either genetically determined or socially engineered and thus without the capacity for voice or resistance.

—Carol Gilligan (2009, January)

Women comprise a minority of those in the criminal justice system, just 6.9% of the prison population and 12.9% of the jail population (West & Sabol, 2009). Women make up 23% of persons on probation, and 12% of those on parole (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2009b). Their rate of increase has been about twice that of the increase of males in confinement. Nevertheless, women are still a small minority of the total incarcerated population, and they are receiving treatment in a system run by men and designed for men.

According to government statistics, girls were 15% of juvenile offenders in residential placement (Snyder and Sickmund, 2006). Females in detention make up 14% of those who were charged with delinquent offenses and 40% of those in placement for status offenses (e.g., running away). Probably due to changes in law enforcement patterns in making arrests for domestic violence situations (as explained in the report), the female arrest rate has increased since 1994 while the male rate has declined.

Although gender-specific programming is coming into its own within juvenile institutions, at the adult level, traditional approaches abound. Within the adult corrections, a focus on equality that is equated with sameness lingers—this misunderstanding of the true spirit of equality often results in identical treatment models for men and women. We might do better to speak of equity or fairness rather than equality in the treatment accorded to diverse populations. An emphasis on equity rather than equality would entail a consideration of differences. From an equity principle, when people are in like circumstances, they should be treated alike, but when their circumstances are different, then equity and fairness may require differential treatment. This is what we learn from Rawls (1971), author of the definitive document on justice.

The reason that a gendered approach is crucial to the treatment of females within the criminal justice system is because girls are different from boys—physiologically, psychologically, and socially, and in more or less the same way, women are different from men.

In her argument for juvenile reform, Francine T. Sherman (2005) summarizes male-female differences:

Adolescent girls who are in the justice system differ from boys developmentally in their focus on relationships; their internalized responses to trauma in the form of depression, self-mutilation, and substance use; and their externalized responses to trauma in the form of aggression. In addition, the pathways girls take into the justice system differ from those of their male counterparts in the prevalence and type of trauma, family loss, and separation they experience….

Girls are more likely than boys to be detained for minor offenses and technical violations and are more likely than boys to be returned to detention for technical violations. Running away and domestic violence, both common in the lives of girls, tend to result in their detention and system involvement. All of these differences demand particular attention in criminal justice reform. (p. 16)

The fact that female offenders are seen as less of a security risk than male offenders opens the door to the possibility of a more flexible approach, one that is even community rather than institutional centered. Consider the next contrasting vignettes from the popular press. The first shows the personal dimension of our one-size-fits-all sentencing structure. The second confirms the value of suiting the punishment to the individual.

CONTRASTING CASE HISTORIES

One of the real-life stories told by organizers at the third annual Mothers in Prison, Children in Crisis rally was that of Sally Smith (Wirpsa, 1998). The rally was part of a national campaign advocating alternative programs for women convicted of drug-related violations. Among the facts presented were these: Women are the fastest-growing population in prisons and jails; the majority had been sentenced for nonviolent crimes; and two-thirds of female inmates are mothers of dependent children. One such woman, caught up in the current draconian anti-drug laws is Sally Smith.

Sally had lived every moment in absolute terror of her husband. Sometimes she was beaten with a baseball bat and furniture and hospitalized; other times she was locked in a closet until her visible wounds healed. Her abuser was a drug dealer. When caught, he was able to reduce his sentence by implicating his wife as a conspirator. This is how Sally Smith came to be sentenced to life without parole under Michigan’s mandatory minimum sentencing laws (Families Against Mandatory Minimums, 1997). This is not an isolated case, as any visit to a women’s prison will confirm.

Sherri Lechner’s story, highlighted in Ozarks Magazine by Ross (2006) is more uplifting, and typical of cases that are referred to a drug court. Drug court is a fairly recent development that provides close supervision and intensive treatment in lieu of imprisonment. A native of the Ozarks, Sherri had the miserable childhood typical of most addicts. Neglected for the most part by her father, Sherri was taken by him to live in Texas because her mother was going to prison there on a drug charge. In the six years she spent in Texas, she was molested multiple times by a relative and a family friend and was introduced to alcohol, cocaine, and methamphetamines at about age 10, also by a family member.

After failing the eighth grade, Sherri returned to Springfield, Missouri, where she lived with her brother, Mike, in a neighborhood known for drug activity, called “the Holler” on the west side of town. Her mother came and went, often “on the run.”

Within a year, at age 15, Sherri became pregnant. She did not use during her pregnancy. After the birth of her daughter, her drug use escalated from smoking meth crystals to daily intravenous use. She sent her child to live with a friend because, she said, her drug life and relationship with a man were more important.

In trouble for drug possession and related crimes, Sherri prayed to become pregnant again so she could get off drugs. Her prayers were answered. Then to avoid going to prison, she agreed to go through Judge Calvin Holden’s drug court. It took two and a half years, but she finally graduated from the rigorous program in 2002. Sherri occasionally tells her story at graduation for the drug court class. She now works as a substance abuse technician at the same treatment center where she had once been a patient. She is working toward her GED. She married her boyfriend after he was released from prison, where he earned his GED and read the Bible. He works as a truck mechanic and began classes at Ozark Technical Community College last fall, working toward a degree in social work.

In the stories of these two women, one can find the interconnection between social policy and women’s victimization, in the first instance, and between social policy and women’s salvation, in the second. These examples, moreover, provide a stark contrast between progressive and standard sentencing practices, a contrast that relates to differing correctional philosophies. Sherri was given her life back including career planning and she did not lose custody of her children; Sally, however, became one of the many hidden victims of the nation’s crackdown on drug use. Nor was she helped by falling in the clutches of the gender-neutral laws that prescribe equality of punishment for women linked with male criminals, the circumstances notwithstanding.

Another theme that transcends these vignettes is the fact that when mothers are sent away to prison, the stage is set for a pattern of shame and victimization that often passes through the generations. But if preventive measures are taken, as happened in Sherri’s case, this pattern can be arrested. A second theme that emerges here is the role of a drug-using boyfriend in a woman’s life, setting in motion a downward spiral into lawbreaking and punishment.

In this book, we examine such programs with a focus on their implications for female victims of crime and the offenders. The task of this chapter is to make a convincing case for specialized programming for girls and women who are in the correctional system. The subject of this chapter is therefore gender, with a focus on the female. Our starting point is an overview of research on the biology of gender and gender differences relevant to female offending. A consideration of right-brain/left-brain differences that relate to gender also is provided. We also explore how these differences are played out in behavior, both in the classroom and in pathways to crime.

We examine also the basic principles on which the programming is based, principles that go under the rubric of restorative justice. This chapter discusses the concepts that underlie this form of justice and build on them to formulate a paradigm that links progressive thinking in social work, the strengths approach, to its counterpart in criminal justice, the restorative justice model.

BIOLOGICAL FACTORS

A biological approach accepts that there are fundamental differences between male and female and that these differences interact with cultural norms to influence differences in male/female criminality. Traditional and liberal (as opposed to radical) feminists who stress gender equality tend to disparage biological research, as Pollock (1999) suggests, because the theories hark back to the days when women were told they must fill their natural role as “mother of the species” and work in the home. The focus on sex differences in brain function, and especially such books that lack empirical rigor, such as The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine (2007), have been widely criticized by other scientists. In a recent Newsweek article highlighting Brizendine’s book, neuropsychiatrist Nancy Andreasen asserts that nurture plays such a huge role in human behavior that focusing on biology is next to meaningless. “Whatever measurable differences exist in the brain,” says Andreasen, “are used to oppress and suppress women” (2006, p. 46). Belknap (2007) agrees: “Central to the patriarchal ideology,” she suggests, “is the belief that women’s nature is biologically, not culturally determined” (p. 10). Historically, the focus on biological differences favored the male and held women to domestic pursuits and service jobs, and thus kept them out of the power structure.

As for myself, between science and ideology, I prefer to go with science. And scientific research tells us that much of what constitutes an individual’s personality is genetically and biologically determined. I do agree with Bloom, Owen, and Covington (2003) that separating biological effects from the social and cultural effects is problematic. In any case, following Belknap, we can draw a distinction between sex and gender; sex is biologically determined and gender is societally based. The Shorter Oxford Dictionary (2007) indicates that both terms refer to male and female differences but that gender refers to cultural attributes.

Unlike liberal feminists, who are apt to stress equality and sameness of the genders, equal pay for equal work and the like, and to refute any claims of difference that could be used to hold women down, some radical feminists have been more willing to appreciate, even to celebrate, the differences. From this perspective, biological differences, far from being denied, can be seen as favoring the female of the species (Goodkind, 2005; van Wormer, 2007). Many such women-centered theorists, according to Robbins et al. (2006), celebrate the power in “women’s ways of knowing” and “the woman’s voice.” This acknowledgment of difference is consistent with a scientifically based imperative to explore sex differences that manifest themselves in every system of body and brain (Gur, Gunning-Dixon, Bilker, & Gur, 2002). This position is interesting because it harks back to the Mother Goose nursery rhyme, popular in the early nineteenth century, that begins “What are little boys made of?” In any case, feminists of the liberal school, such as Goodkind (2005), find such a focus on difference objectionable because it fails to take into account variation within and between genders. She warns against “essentializing” gender role differences and “portraying them as inherent and even biologically determined” (p. 59).

The position of this book is that in search of knowledge about human behavior, a holistic, biopsychosocial approach is essential. A holistic approach, such as that favored here, states that gender role difference is not a case of nature versus nurture but of both nature and nurture.

The basic biological factors that impinge on gender differences in criminality are informed by research on physiology and neurology. In making the case for gender-sensitive programming in corrections, a logical starting point is a review of some of the scientific literature on sex differences.

Research Based on Animal Studies

Evolutionists such as Wrangham and Petersen (1996) offer a challenge to traditional feminist cultural determinism. Their conclusions are bolstered by ape studies in which male chimpanzees compete aggressively for rank and dominance (to be the alpha male) while male predators attack the weak, and female chimps often bond with the predators. Is the frequency of male violence a mere artifact of physical strength? they ask. For answers, they look to human society.

Examining data drawn from global crime statistics on same-gender murder (to eliminate the factor of male strength), Wrangham and Peterson found the statistics to be amazingly consistent. In all societies except for Denmark, the probability that a same-gender murder has been committed by a man, not a woman, ranges from 92% to 100%. In Denmark, all the female-on-female murders were cases of infanticide. We need to remove our inhibitions based on feminist politics, these researchers argue. We need to study violence such as murder and rape as biological phenomena. The origins of male violence, as Wrangham and Peterson conclude, are found in the social lives of chimpanzees and other apes, our closest living nonhuman relatives. Because some of the great apes, specifically the bonobos, are considerably less aggressive, more research is needed on this matter. Although evolutionists like Wrangham and Peterson may tend to exaggerate aggressive tendencies in males, others draw on the link between testosterone and aggression in humans and nonhuman animals to explain the male propensity for physical aggression (Palmer, 2008).

Brain Research

The advent of human brain-imaging techniques such as positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging has heightened awareness of sex differences by revealing sex influences on brain functions for which the sex of participants was previously assumed to matter little, if at all. But these differences do matter, as neuroscientist Cahill (2006) asserts, and they are observed in gender differences in human behavior.

Brain research tells us what ideology cannot: that a sizable portion of human behavior is neurological. Women’s brains are smaller than men’s, but they have a higher processing quality. The region at the base of the brain that includes the amygdala is involved in emotional arousal and excitement is about the same size in men and women. But women have a significantly higher volume in the orbital frontal cortex than men do. This suggests, according to Gur et al. (2002), that when anger is aroused, women are better equipped than men to exercise self-control.

In his summary of recent neurological research, Cahill (2006) concludes that there are sex influences at all levels of the nervous system, from genes to behavior. Such research has shown sex differences in many areas of brain and behavior, including emotion, memory, vision, hearing, facial expressions, pain perception, navigation, neurotransmitter levels, stress hormone action on the brain, and diseases, including addiction. Recent animal research has increasingly documented new, often surprising, sex influences on the brain.

The picture of brain organization that emerges from Cahill’s perspective is of two complex mosaics—one male and one female. Investigators are increasingly realizing that they can no longer assume that essentially identical processes occur in men and women, notes Cahill, nor that...