Mean Lives, Mean Laws

Susan F. Sharp

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780813562759
• eBook ISBN: 9780813573977
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

 Oklahoma has long held the dubious honor of having the highest female incarceration rate in the country, nearly twice the national average. In this compelling new book, sociologist Susan Sharp sets out to discover just what has gone so wrong in the state of Oklahoma—and what that might tell us about trends in female incarceration nationwide.The culmination of over a decade of original research, Mean Lives, Mean Laws exposes a Kafkaesque criminal justice system, one that has no problem with treating women as collateral damage in the War on Drugs or with stripping female prisoners of their parental rights. Yet it also reveals the individual histories of women who were jailed in Oklahoma, providing intimate portraits of their lives before, during, and after their imprisonment. We witness the impoverished and abusive conditions in which many of these women were raised; we get a vivid portrait of their everyday lives behind bars; and we glimpse the struggles that lead many ex-convicts to fall back into the penal system.Through an innovative methodology that combines statistical rigor with extensive personal interviews, Sharp shows how female incarceration affects not only individuals, but also families and communities. Putting a human face on a growing social problem, Mean Lives, Mean Laws raises important questions about both the state of Oklahoma and the state of the nation.

Chapter 1

Mean Lives

A Theoretical Framework

Although the public attitude is often that women offenders are mean or bad, the real stories are far more complex. It is impossible to understand the choices of women who offend without placing those choices in the context of the women’s lives and social placement. Today there is an evolving understanding of women who offend, but that has not always been the case. Historically, women offenders have either been ignored or seen as abnormal, because they not only violated the laws but also gender norms.

Early Theoretical Approaches to Women Offenders

Forty years ago, there was little information on women who offended or on women’s imprisonment. Since women constituted only a small proportion of all prisoners, they were deemed as being of only marginal interest to criminologists. Most of the theories of crime that were developed in the first half of the twentieth century ignored women, and thus little information was available to be incorporated into correctional programming. When attention was paid to women offenders, the attitude was that they were somehow both criminal and unlike other women, or “doubly deviant.”

In theories developed during that period, women who committed crimes were usually portrayed as sexually deviant. Indeed, female criminals were in some ways viewed as more deviant than male criminals, since they not only violated criminal laws but also violated the norms of “ideal womanhood,” and thus were a threat to dominant patriarchal ideas regarding acceptable female roles (Schur 1984). While much has changed since then, much has remained the same, at least in the eyes of the general public. While feminist criminologists have developed far better explanations of why women offend, female prisoners are still viewed by the average person as doubly deviant women.

The tendency to overlook female offenders was long-standing. However, even during the early days of criminology, a few theorists attempted to explain women’s crime. These explanations tended to be based in devaluation of women in general, with a focus on “inappropriate” sexuality as the explanation. For example, in the nineteenth century, Cesare Lombroso sought to explain the crimes of both men and women. Lombroso considered criminality to be the result of being a biological throwback, or atavist, someone less evolved. Lombroso and his son-in-law Guglielmo Ferrero argued that women were less evolved than men, but women criminals offended because they were more like men (Lombroso and Ferrero 2004; Rafter 2005). They linked female offending to female sexuality, arguing that increased sexuality was a way that “female born criminals” were more masculine than other women. Lombroso also sought to explain why women offended less often than men, which created a dilemma for him. He believed that crime was the result of being less evolved but also that women were less evolved than men. However, he knew that women were also less criminal than men. Thus, he attempted to resolve this inherent conflict by postulating that criminal women were more masculine than other women, as evidenced by their sexual conduct, and thus they were more like atavistic men than like other women. In other words, women who committed crime did so because they were masculine, especially in their sexuality (Smart 1976; Lombroso and Ferrero 2004; Rafter 2005; Belknap 2007).

A few decades later, W.I. Thomas (1923) focused more on social explanations and less on biological explanations than Lombroso, but his work still barely scratched the surface in its examination of the causes of female offending. Like Lombroso, Thomas linked female criminality to female sexuality. He argued that girls became delinquent due to a desire to have companionship and be loved. Unlike males, whom he believed committed crimes for economic reasons, Thomas suggested that females became promiscuous in order to manipulate males (Thomas 1923; Belknap 2007). Two weaknesses in his approach stand out. First, he equated female sexual behavior with female criminal behavior. Second and even more importantly, he ignored the social and economic forces which contributed to women’s crime.

The works of these early criminologists have had a long-standing impact on the American penal system. Ignoring the ways in which lack of opportunity and power shape women’s crime has had a serious effect on how women prisoners have been treated or—more often—not treated. It was not until the middle of the twentieth century that more in-depth studies of women, crime, and the criminal justice system emerged. At the forefront of this change, Otto Pollak did acknowledge that there could be structural reasons, such as poverty, for women’s crimes. And yet he also continued the theme of blaming women’s biology for their offending, albeit from a slightly different perspective. Pollak focused more on the argument that women’s hormonal fluctuations contributed to their criminal behavior. He further argued that women were as criminal as men, but their behavior was more hidden, devious, and secretive. He postulated that both their own deceitful natures and a chivalrous system kept the public from being aware of the true extent of crimes committed by women (Pollak 1950, 1961; Smart 1976). Again, the blame was placed squarely on the women themselves, with little thought about how social conditions and unequal power might shape their lives.

More recent research has called Pollak’s suppositions about the level of female crime into question. In their influential work, Darrell Steffensmeier and Emilie Allan (1996) observed that while both male and female offenders were much more likely to engage in less serious types of crime, males committed less serious offenses at much higher rates than females as well as more serious offenses. Their study of arrest records pointed out that over a three decade period, females constituted 15 percent or less of the arrests in all crime categories, with one notable exception: The increase in women’s participation in minor property crimes such as larceny and fraud had risen to over 30 percent by 1990. This increased representation of women in larceny and fraud crimes pointed to the feminization of poverty during the shift to a post-industrial society (Chesney-Lind 1989; Steffensmeier and Allan 1996; Belknap 2007). These trends were substantiated by other data sources such as the National Crime Victimization Survey and self-report data. However, research continued to demonstrate that not only did fewer women than men offend, but they offended at lower rates. Steffensmeier’s work has challenged Pollak’s argument that the chivalrous nature of the criminal justice system and women’s devious natures combine to keep their crimes hidden. Indeed, it is clear that males offend more than women. Not only do more males offend, but they offend more often and more seriously. Therefore, it should be no surprise that women are less likely to be incarcerated.

Emergence of Feminist Approaches

Other explanations of women’s crime began to emerge. Feminist criminological theories began arising during the 1970s, largely due to the women’s movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. However, prior to the emergence of clearly feminist explanations of crime, Freda Adler and Rita Simon set forth the argument that female crime would begin to increase as a society moved toward gender equality. This approach, often known as the liberation/emancipation hypothesis, was based on the idea that as women’s positions in society improved, they would have increased opportunities to engage in illegitimate as well as legitimate activities (Adler 1975; Simon 1975). John Hagan took this argument a step further with the power-control theory, suggesting that growing up in more egalitarian families would also increase female delinquency (Hagan, Gillis and Simpson 1987, 1993).

While these theories are by and large refuted by today’s feminist criminologists, one point made by Simon is noteworthy, and in some ways foreshadowed the explosion of female imprisonment in the latter part of the twentieth century. Simon reflected that the idea of gender equality might impact the criminal justice system. She was concerned that there might be a punitive reaction to more gender equality, increasing the rate of incarceration for women (Simon 1975; Daly and Chesney-Lind 1988). Clearly, policies and laws put into place during the 1980s and 1990s have demonstrated that women who offend have been disproportionately impacted by the changes (Chesney-Lind 1991; Chesney-Lind and Pollock-Byrne 1995; Chesney-Lind 2003). One has only to look at the words of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio to see evidence of the backlash against women who offend (Faludi 1991). “If women can fight for their country, and bless them for that, if they can walk a beat, if they can protect the people and arrest violators of the law, then they should have no problem with picking up trash in 120 degrees” (Chesney-Lind 2003). Feminist criminologists have responded to these arguments. In an early feminist treatise, Meda Chesney-Lind pointed out that the behavior of girls received a different response than that of boys, and that girls were far more likely than boys to enter the juvenile justice system through the commission of status offenses such as truancy, running away, and curfew violations (Chesney-Lind 1973, 1974, 1977, 1986, 1989, 1997; Belknap 2004; Chesney-Lind and Shelden 2004). The regulation of female sexuality was at the core of responses to these offenses. Her later work brought recognition of what is perhaps the most important precursor of female offending: childhood abuse, particularly sexual abuse (Chesney-Lind 1977, 1986; Chesney-Lind and Shelden 2004). In her own words, “Ever since I met Michele [Alvey] in the first class I taught in prison, I knew the place to locate the story was almost always in the victimization” (Belknap 2004, 18). Although her voice is perhaps the best known, Chesney-Lind is not alone in speaking out about women offenders and their treatment. Dana Britton views the publication of Carol Smart’s critique as the beginning of feminist criminology as a distinct approach (Britton 2000). However, I would place the commencement more with the work of Frances Heidensohn, whose first publication raised important questions about women’s crime and their imprisonment (1968). Although not openly feminist in her initial approach, Heidensohn’s early work laid the groundwork for other scholars to follow.

Feminist criminology received a boost with the publication of Smart’s treatise in 1976. Her work not only pointed out the false impressions of women offenders found in earlier works but also began developing theories based on the unique issues of women offenders (Naffine 1996). Feminist criminologists have also focused on the treatment of female offenders by institutions of social control. For example, a 1980s study found that while family was considered a stabilizing factor by the courts for both men and women who offended, legal decisions appeared to be based on a traditional view of gender roles (Eaton 1986). Women who were “proper housewives” were seen as less of a risk than other women (Kruttschnitt 1982; Eaton 1986). Motherhood, especially by middle class standards, was found to be a protection against imprisonment (Carlen 1983).

But perhaps the most important development in feminist criminology has been the incorporation of advocacy and the voices of the subjects into the research. Feminist standpoint theory takes into account the social placement of both the researchers and the subjects (Carlen 1983; Harding 1991; Ngaire 1996; Flavin 2001). It is through works like Pat Carlen’s edited volume of autobiographies that we have learned much about the nature of life within women’s prisons and about the women themselves (1985). Standpoint feminist criminology is not without its critics, however, including those who point out that it is dangerous to view women as a unidimensional whole, that race and class must also be part of the discussion (Cain 1990).

Current Approach: Feminist Strain Theory

This book is framed in a feminist strain approach, drawing from feminist pathways approaches (Simpson 1989; Daly 1992; Owen 1998; Moffitt et al. 2001; Reisig, Holtfreter, and Morash 2006; Simpson, Yahner, and Dugan 2008; Salisbury and Van Voorhis 2009; Salisbury, Van Voorhis, and Spiropoulos 2009; Brennan 2012; Burgess-Proctor 2012), general strain theory (Agnew 1992), and research from the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study (Felitti et al. 1998). By incorporating the major elements of general strain theory into a feminist pathways approach, our understanding of women’s crime can be enhanced.

Feminist pathways models have some relationship to life-course and developmental theories that focus on transitional points which place individuals on different trajectories (Sampson and Laub 1993). However, because Rob Sampson and John Laub based their work on the Glueck data, their version of life-course theory was developed to explain the behavior of males. It focuses on social bonds during childhood and adulthood and how weakening or strengthening of these bonds can explain the onset as well as either persistence or desistance of delinquent and criminal behavior. The argument is that childhood experiences may place an individual on a delinquent or criminal trajectory, but salient relationships such as entering into a meaningful job or a strong marriage can change the trajectory of a youthful offender into a more conforming path (Sampson and Laub 1993; Laub and Sampson 1993, 2006).

It does not, however, focus on ways in which the very structure of society may place certain individuals and groups, such as women and minorities, in tenuous and often painful positions, including remaining in abusive relationships. Nor does life-course theory examine how the system as a whole responds to those who react to strain with nonconforming and often criminal behaviors. Finally, it fails to take into consideration that marriage and career may be less important for many women, while motherhood instead may serve as a turning point (Sharp 1998; Hope, Wilder, and Terling-Watt 2003). Thus, mainstream life-course theory cannot provide a true feminist framework. Indeed, the trauma and lack of power experienced by women may serve as turning points that funnel them into crime. Limited choice of intimate partners further insures they will be exposed to crime and drug use. The social placement of women, especially poor women, is an integral part of women’s pathways into crime.

In feminist pathways approaches, the focus is on how the abuse and oppression of women and girls narrows their options and may place them on a trajectory where crime may be the most logical response. Most pathways approaches describe multiple pathways of women into crime.

For example, in her examination of the lives of female heroin addicts, Marsha Rosenbaum (1981) found that the pre-addiction social worlds inhabited by the women shaped their entry into the world of heroin addiction. In her research, middle-class white women sometimes retreated into the “hippie trip.” While they did not experience poverty growing up, they often were the products of emotionally (and sometimes physically or sexually) abusive homes and felt socially isolated in school. They often began running away during their teens, living on the streets, and being arrested. Arrest then led to either detention or return to their homes, followed by running away again. On the streets, they were often preyed upon by older males who introduced them to drugs and crime as a way of life.

In contrast, lower- and working-class girls who associated with male gangs often dropped out of school to party with these males, limiting their options as they became adults. These women tended to be subservient to the males in their circle, often carrying drugs or weapons for them or committing petty thefts to bring in money. They viewed themselves and the males with whom they associated as outlaws. They were introduced to drugs by the males in the gang and became involved with the justice system when arrested for either carrying drugs weapons or for petty theft (Rosenbaum 1981).

Among lower-class women of color, particularly black women, limited opportunities and substandard schools often led to involvement with men who were successful as drug dealers, deemed the “fast life” by Rosenbaum (1981). Often coming from chaotic families rife with poverty and violence, these women sought refuge by attaching themselves with men who were successful in the underground economy. Unfortunately, this often led to prostitution when they were pimped out by their male partners.

Rosenbaum (1979) also found that many of these women became mothers at an early age, and their drug use led to difficulty meeting their parental obligations and then to extreme guilt, which in turn led to further drug use. While the popular view of drug-using mothers is that they do not care about their children, other research has documented that, in reality, they care a lot about being good mothers. When possible, they try to manage both addiction and motherhood. If that becomes untenable, they may place their children with other family members. However, involuntary loss of their children can create further strain and lead to further drug use and other self-destructive behaviors (Kearney, Murphy, and Rosenbaum 1994; Sharp 1996, 1998).

Throughout these pathways into addiction and crime, the role of strains in the lives of these women is readily apparent. For those following the hippie pathway, childhood abuse and poor relationships with peers was evident, while the women following the outlaw pathway experienced strain from limited options due to low educational attainment. Those entering addiction (and crime) via the fast life experienced multiple strains due to poverty and abuse in their childhoods. Furthermore, many women became mothers at an early age, creating still more strain. Regardless of the initial pathway, all the women who had children faced additional strains resulting from difficulties juggling their drug-using and criminal lifestyle with motherhood.

In one of the better known pathways models, Kathleen Daly (1992) delineated five pathways into crime. Women who ran away or were turned out of their home at an early age developed survival skills that often were criminal, such as prostitution or theft. Those who had been the victims of childhood abuse began using drugs to cope with their abuse and often acted out violently. In contrast, battered women who had not been involved in crime or drug abuse early in their lives sometimes became violent, especially toward their abusive partners. Additionally, some women became involved with drugs through relationships with males. Daly’s final group of women became involved in crime through the commission of economic crimes, often motivated by poverty (see also Morash and Schram 2002).

In one of the most in-depth analyses of women’s pathways into crime, Barbara Owen (1998) documented not only the life histories of women prisoners, but how those histories contributed to how the women served their time. Through data and in-depth interviews, she described not only their extensive abuse histories but also their economic marginalization. Owen cited childhood family life, children and life on the streets, and a “multiplicity of abuse,” stressing how these contributed to a “spiraling marginality,” placing these women on the outer fringes of American society (1998, 41).

Pathways approaches often incorporate Cathy Widom’s “cycle of violence.” (Widom 1989; Widom and Rivera 1990; Widom 1995; Widom and Maxfield 2001). The focus is on how those who are abused are more likely to become offenders themselves. The fundamental concept of Widom’s work is that abuse and trauma during childhood are linked to offending during adulthood, much as general strain theory and the ACE study argue. In one study, she found that abused girls were 73 percent more likely those without a history of abuse to engage in nonviolent offending later in life (Widom and Maxfield 2001). Abuse has also been linked to girls running away (Kaufmann and Widom 1999; Kempf-Leonard and Johansson 2007). Running away puts girls on the streets, often forcing them to turn to prostitution, the...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. Mean Lives: A Theoretical Framework
• 2. Mean Laws: The Rise in Female Imprisonment
• 3. Mean Women or Mean Lives? Adverse Childhood Experiences and Adult Abuse of Women Prisoners
• 4. The Prison Experience
• 5. Going Back Again
• 6. Coming Home and Staying Out
• 7. The Children and Their Caregivers
• 8. Winds of Change
• 9. Lessons Learned and Moving Forward
• Appendix A. Research Methods
• Appendix B. Oklahoma Children of Incarcerated Parents
• Notes
• References
• Index
• About the Authors
• Read More in the Series