Women and Girls in the Criminal Justice System: Policy Issues and Practice Strategies

Women and Girls in the Criminal Justice System: Policy Issues and Practice Strategies is a reference text composed of 52 chapters, all of which have been published in the journal Women, Girls, and Criminal Justice. Reviews of empirical data, quantitative and qualitative studies, and innovative program descriptions contribute to this excellent overview of the plight of females in the correctional system. Articles are arranged in six sections that address criminal justice policy, girls and juvenile justice, mothers and their children, gender-specific risk assessments and programing, drug treatment and mental health care, and programs and practices. The fact that female offenders are often overlooked in studies and policy development makes this compilation an important text for forensic professionals. The wide range of topics includes, but is not limited to, approaches to women who harm themselves, the benefits of offering a college education to women during incarceration, and innovative services offered in disparate areas such as Minnesota and Scotland. The recent influx of women into the criminal justice system makes this book particularly timely.

Female offenders have elevated rates of mental illness, substance abuse, and victimization. This may seem inconsequential to those of us performing individual evaluations. However, on a systemic level, policy changes that promote offender rehabilitation in sentencing and programing are needed. This book contains data that will help correctional psychiatrists seeking to challenge currently practiced models of care that are not gender-sensitive.

Women and girls have been increasingly arrested and prosecuted in recent decades, largely due to drug offenses and status offenses, respectively (Chapters 1 and 9). Similar to incarcerated men, these women are disproportionately of minority ethnicity.

Readers of the first chapter glean that female offenders are more likely than their male counterparts to have personal histories of sexual abuse, often in childhood, and to have a trajectory that leads to substance abuse.

The book contains insightful discussions of gender differences in pathways toward criminality, and the impact on the children of mothers charged with crimes. The authors posit that in addition to holding women accountable, we must give them the skills necessary to become productive members of the community. Interviews with women who had been incarcerated indicated that upon release, they valued the “importance of developing new internal attitudes for behavioral decision-making” (p 43-3).

The relationship between criminal justice and maternal caretaking is reviewed in a section entitled “Mothers and Children.” Readers of this section will appreciate that more than two-thirds of incarcerated women are mothers who were often the primary caretakers of their children. Incarcerating these women, even during the pretrial phase, has implications for their children, who “become unwitting victims of their mother's debt to society” (p 23-1). The consequent collateral effects of the mother's confinement depend on the child's developmental stage.

The authors discuss the consequences of recent legislation, such as the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997: “When one considers the number of months, or even years, spent in pretrial detention in large metropolitan criminal court systems, it is quite possible that even a mother found not guilty of a criminal charge could lose her children permanently while awaiting trial on a case” (p 15-3). Also, a relatively new lifetime ban on cash assistance and food stamps for women convicted of drug offenses (and their children), enacted in many states, has affected an estimated 135,000 children (p 16-7). One author found a consensus among treatment staff that this ban was counterproductive: “Denying women cashassistance and food stamps does nothing to prevent drug usage or sales; instead it increases the chances of recidivism and relapse, harms women and their children, and makes it harder for them to reconnect with society and to rebuild their lives” (p 17-8).

The United States is one of the few nations that routinely separate incarcerated mothers from their infants (p 20-1). This is no small matter, as approximately one-tenth of the women in prison are pregnant (p 19-3). The author of one article describes an Ohio prison nursery program with very specific requirements for entry. A goal of this and similar programs is prevention of incarceration of children in a cyclical pattern of generational dysfunction. Other pioneering programs for mothers of young children are also detailed.

This compilation contains articles that vividly portray commonalities among girls entering the juvenile justice system. Early victimization, substance abuse, failed placements, school failures, and early sexual activity complete the picture (p 9-2). Intriguing chapters include “Bad Girls, Bad Girls, Whatcha Gonna Do?”, which provides suggestions for prevention of fighting among girls, and “Girls and Relational Aggression: Beyond the ‘Mean Girl’ Hype.” Relational aggression includes the “repertoire of passive and/or indirect behaviors (e.g., rolling eyes, spreading rumors, and ignoring) used with the ‘intent to hurt or harm others.' ” (p 11-2). The authors also describe policies and programs designed to prevent these girls from entering the adult criminal justice system.

In summary, the authors of these articles describe problems with our current system and discuss novel innovative programs that have been successful in their various locales. Gender-specific programing, which takes into consideration the different needs and challenges of these women, is discussed. The book provides veritable checklists of the central features of appropriate services for these offenders.

This book would be useful to forensic psychiatrists, other mental health clinicians, attorneys, policy makers, and service planners seeking to increase their knowledge about policy regarding female offenders. Moreover, it describes the context of female offenders’ life situations and provides a wealth of information that can help promote appropriate services for women and girls and stimulate creative thinking about policy and programing.

• American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law