Mothering and Desistance in Re-Entry

Venezia Michalsen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781317228097
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism for Women Authors
• Index: Literature

Although there is plentiful research on the impact of marriage, employment and the military on desistance from criminal behaviour in the lives of men, far less is known about the factors most important to women's desistance. Imprisoned women are far more likely than their male counterparts to be the primary caretakers of children before their incarceration, and are far more likely to intend to reunify with their children upon their release from incarceration. This book focuses on the role of mothering in women's desistance from criminal behaviour.

Drawing on original research, this book explores the nature of mothering during incarceration, how mothers maintain a relationship with their children from behind bars and the ways in which mothering makes desistance more or less likely after incarceration. It outlines the ways in which race, gender, class, nationality, sexuality, gender identity, and other characteristics affect mothering and desistance, and explores the tensions between individual and system-level factors in the consideration of desistance.

This book suggests that any discussion of desistance, particularly for women, must move beyond the traditional focus on individual characteristics and decision-making. Such a focus overlooks the role played by context and systems which undermine both women's attempts to be mothers and their attempts to desist. By contrast, in the tradition of Beth Richie's Compelled to Crime, this book explores both the trees and the forests, and the quantum in-between, in a way that aims for lasting societal and individual changes.

Chapter 1

Incarcerated women and mothers around the world

Over ten million people are incarcerated globally. Of that ten million, over 700,000 (14%) are women and girls (Walmsley, 2015). That dramatic global ratio is consistent at a national level: Women make up only a small percentage of prisoners in any country, always less than 20% (ICPR, 2018). When it comes to numbers, however, the United States dominates incarceration both overall and in terms of women: Kajstura and Immarigeon (2015) found that although only 5% of the world’s population of women is in the United States, incarcerated American women make up 30% of all incarcerated women around the world. Only Thailand has a higher female incarceration rate than the United States, though its rate is lower than that of 25 U.S. states. In fact, though China is close behind the United States when it comes to the number of people incarcerated (the two countries together have 40% of the world’s incarcerated population), the United States’ female incarceration percentage is twice that of China and four times that of Russia (Kajstura and Immarigeon, 2015).

Though they are low relative to those of men, these rates of world female imprisonment have risen significantly since the turn of the century: around 50% between 2000 and 2014, compared to an 18% rise in the world population during that time. This is in sharp contrast to the overall prison rate increase, which has not grown nearly as quickly (about 20% in that same time frame) (Walmsley, 2015).

So while men’s incarceration rates have slowed around the world, women’s rates continue to rise. One might expect that this would be due to increases in women’s involvement in criminal behavior. This growth is not, however, due to increases in women’s crime, though some criminologists predicted it would be because they feared that women’s progress in legitimate spheres would be accompanied by progress in illegal activities (Adler, Adler & Levins, 1975). Rather, imprisonment rates, especially those of women, are growing overwhelmingly because of punitive trends in policy on a global level (see Gainsborough, 2007 for a review). Women around the world are mostly incarcerated for low-level drug, property and public order crimes, such as sex work (Reynolds, 2008). For example, in the United States, two-thirds of imprisoned women are being held for non-violent property and public order crimes, such as those associated with drugs or sex (Frost, Greene & Pranis, 2006). Likewise, in the United Kingdom, the crimes women are most likely to be incarcerated for are fraud and forgery (12.6% women), theft & handling (10.7% women) and drug offenses (6.8% women), whereas men make up the overwhelming majority of people incarcerated for sexual offenses (99.2% men), for burglary (97.6% men), for robbery (96.7%) and for violence against persons (95.5% men) (Parity Briefing Paper, 2013). This same pattern repeats in Brazil, where almost half of women in prison are there for simply for drug convictions (Human Rights Watch, 1998). Not only are these offenses overwhelmingly for crimes borne of poverty and victimization, but are also due to increased worldwide use of imprisonment for offenses that in the past would have been punished with non-custodial sentences (Fair 2009; Kruttschnitt 2010; Bastick et al. 2008). ¹

Despite the fact that many hundreds of thousands of women are behind bars around the world, and the fact that their incarceration is particularly disruptive to families and communities (which we will discuss in Chapter 4), the general public knows very little about who these women are. This chapter provides a detailed picture of the context and situation of these women, starting with an exploration of the characteristics of incarcerated women around the world, with a focus then on incarcerated mothers. This is followed by a focus on the rules of treatment developed (but not always followed) by the international community, and concludes with the implications of this global problem.

So who are incarcerated women?

Given such an international scope, it is surprising that the portrait of an incarcerated woman is relatively consistent from country to country. We know quite a lot about the United States’ female prison population because it is the world’s leading incarcerator: most salient, women of color are disproportionately represented. We also know that women involved in the criminal justice system are disproportionately at the intersections of low-income and race and ethnicity: Hispanic women are incarcerated at one and a half times the rate of white women, and Black women are almost three times as likely to be incarcerated as their white counterparts (Guerino, Harrison & Sabol, 2011). Women in American prisons are likely to be poor: almost half report that they were unemployed in the month before their arrest (Women’s Prison Association, 2009). Imprisoned American women are also likely to have histories of violent victimization and the associated problems with mental health and substance abuse (Bloom & Covington, 2009; Covington, 2006; Dodge & Pogrebin, 2001; Harwell & Orr, 2009; Tripodi & Pettus-Davis, 2013). In the United Kingdom, we find a similar portrait of incarcerated women: ethnic minority and foreign national women, often first-offense single mothers, are particularly overrepresented in prison (CWCJS, 2009). The story is the same in Canada, where ethnic minority aboriginal women make up one-third of the female prison population (Wesley, 2012). So despite the wide variety of ethnic and racial makeups of individual countries, prisons and jails are consistent in that their populations are always overwhelmingly women of ethnic and racial minorities of their individual countries, suggesting a punitive approach to people more likely to be facing disadvantage.

To summarize, so much of women’s incarceration is affected by the relative poverty and the social disenfranchisement that comes of membership in an ethnic minority group. So then are women particularly likely to be poor and disenfranchised compared to their male counterparts? The Women’s World Conference is convened by the United Nations, in the pursuit of equality between men and women, as provided in the founding United Nations charter (United Nations, 1945). Part of this focus included the declaration of 1975 as “International Women’s Year,” and the start of the World Conference on Women, held that year in Mexico City and thereafter every five years in Copenhagen (1980), Nairobi (1985) and then Beijing in 1995. After that Fourth Women’s World Conference in Beijing in 1995, which focused in particular on action, there was more attention paid to the idea of the “feminization of poverty,” the fact that women are over-represented among the poor around the world (Bradshaw, Chat & Linneker, 2017; Chant, 2016). It is certainly true around the world that females internationally are more vulnerable to victimization, and that their income is less fairly allocated in male-headed households than in female-headed households. However, as scholarship has evolved around this issue, there has emerged a more nuanced concept of this relative disadvantage. More recently, scholars have suggested the concept of the “feminization of vulnerability” which focuses not just on the relative poverty of female-headed households, but on the fact that such households are more vulnerable to poverty because of the absence of assets such as land, credit markets, labor markets, insurance schemes and social capital (Klasen, Lechtenfeld & Pavel, 2015). Perhaps most useful is the idea of the “feminization of responsibility and/or obligation” (Chant, 2016) that acknowledges the feminization of effort in the home and the workplace, despite the fact that that work is uncompensated and powerless, respectively. Consistent with findings about crime, for example, Owusu-Afriyie and Nketiah-Amoponsah (2014) found in Ghana that as education among women increased, the feminization trend of poverty decreased. Likewise in Nicaragua, Montoya and Teixeira (2017) saw female poverty reduce as housing and education improved for those households.

So what we have seen so far is a portrait of women being more likely to be poor and stay poor. Relatedly, women’s crimes are often related to economic or emotional survival or both, rooted not only in poverty, but also in survival in the wake of victimization. In fact, gendered pathways theory is one of the few criminological theories that focuses exclusively on the ways in which women become involved in the criminal justice system. It shows that women’s crime is most often the end result of a pathway started in childhood abuse, and the resulting mental health challenges, substance use as a coping strategy, and economic and public order crimes committed to maintain the drug abuse (Gehring, 2016). In line with gendered pathways theory, research has shown the many ways in which women’s crime is rooted in experiences of childhood abuse, and the often resulting adult victimization, economic marginalization and substance abuse (Belknap, 2007; Chesney-Lind, 1997; Daly, 1998; Farley & Barkan, 1998; Huebner, DeJong & Cobbina, 2010; Owen, 1998; Surratt, Kurtz, Weaver & Inciardi, 2005). Specifically, many feminist scholars theorize that women’s drug use is a coping method for the pain of abuse (Chesney-Lind, 1997; Daly, 1998), which is reflected in incarcerated women’s self-reported drug use. One of the most indelible findings about women with criminal justice system involvement is that they exhibit far more experiences with trauma than their counterparts in the community. Incarcerated women report staggeringly high rates of not only childhood abuse, but also intimate partner violence. Childhood trauma, specifically sexual and physically abuse, is particularly likely (Christopher, Lutz-Zois & Reinhardt, 2007; Moloney & Moller, 2009; Peltan & Cellucci, 2011; Swogger, Conner, Walsh & Maisto, 2011). Such experiences of childhood sexual abuse in particular are likely to result in symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and/or substance abuse (Harner & Riley, 2013) and low levels of self-esteem (Klein, Elifson & Sterk, 2007; Leonard, Iverson & Follette, 2008). The resulting high rates of PTSD are therefore unsurprising. Research has shown PTSD rates as high as 88% of incarcerated women (Wolff, Frueh, Shi, Gerardi, Fabrikant & Schumann, 2011). These rates are also far higher for incarcerated women than they are for men. Research has shown that women have more experiences with prior victimization and trauma, substance abuse and mental health problems than men (Drapalski et al., 2009; Green et al., 2005; Teplin, Abram & McClelland, 1996; Warren et al., 2002), are exposed to more trauma than men while they are incarcerated (Battle, Zlotnick, Najavits & Gutierrez, 2003) and have higher rates of both mental health disorders and substance abuse problems than their male counterparts (Green et al., 2005; Jordan et al., 2002; Messina & Grella, 2006; Teplin et al., 1996).

Mental health and substance abuse illustrate the challenges faced by women with such histories of victimization. Women are more likely than their male counterparts to report that they had had used drugs at the time of the crime for which they were incarcerated (Dowden & Brown, 2002; Greenfeld & Snell, 1999; Harm & Phillips, 2001; Mallik-Kane & Visher, 2008; Uggen & Kruttschnitt, 1998). Once addicted to the drugs that help them cope with trauma, women must find ways to fund their habits, particularly if their drug and alcohol use makes it difficult for them to maintain legal employment (Huebner, DeJong & Cobbina, 2010; Uggen and Thompson, 2003). Women incarcerated in British facilities have higher rates of a number of health and mental health problems than their non-incarcerated counterparts, including psychosis, depression, drug abuse, self-harm and suicide. One in three women incarcerated in British prisons have sexual trauma histories, and more than half have been the victims of intimate partner violence (CWCJS, 2009). The significant impact of drugs also shows up in Italy, where incarcerated women are more likely than their male counterparts to abuse drugs (Zoia, 2005). In Hong Kong, research has shown that Chinese mainland migrant women, often poor and considered to be culturally inferior, engaging in survival sex work are particularly likely to be incarcerated (Lee, 2007). In Australia, researchers repeat the same characteristics: high rates of physical and sexual abuse, of substance abuse, of suicide attempts, of mental and physical health struggles, and with minority indigenous women overrepresented (Wilmoth, 2005).

Across Europe, research has shown that the vast majority of imprisoned women have histories of drug or alcohol abuse (Zurhold & Haasen, 2005). Zurhold and Haasen (2005) found that, across all 25 EU Member-states, drug-related problems were more prevalent among incarcerated women, and that programs were insufficient to meet women’s needs, a finding consistent with the 2009 WHO report on women’s health in prison. Prison facilities were built with men in mind, and special health needs are neglected because women make up such a small proportion of incarcerated people around the world (van den Bergh, Gatherer, Fraser & Moller, 2011). The quality of health care services behind bars is almost universally poorly implemented, and certainly not focused on the preventative care that might promote wellness before and after release. This is particularly true for women, whose lower level conviction offenses are result in far shorter sentences than their male counterparts, so any potential treatment is likely to be shorter. While effective assessment and treatment programs exist, the lack of attention paid to the relatively tiny population of jailed women means that they are rarely implemented (Farkas & Hrouda, 2007; Haywood, Kravitz, Goldman & Freeman, 2000). The health concerns common in correctional facilities are characteristics of “lives of poverty, drug use, family violence, sexual assault, adolescent pregnancy, malnutrition, and poor preventative health care” (Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, 2004/5, page 2). For example, in Italy, Zoia (2005) describes understaffed “on-demand” medical care services, unequipped t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Iris
• 1. Incarcerated women and mothers around the world
• Alessandra
• 2. Methods and theory
• Keisha
• 3. Women and mothers coming home
• Melissa
• 4. Mothering, desistance and redemption
• Nichola
• 5. The way forward
• Index