What Works With Female Offenders

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What Works With Female Offenders?

• Glasgow School of Social Work
• June 2007

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• Why does it matter?
• The nature of womens offending
• Sentencing trends
• Women and community penalties
• Understanding womens offending
• Pathways into offending
• Criminogenic needs
• Desistance
• Addressing womens offending
• What women value from supervision
• The problems with what works

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Features of Girls and Womens Offending

• Relatively infrequent in comparison with
  offending by boys/men
• Typically involves offences that are relatively
  minor and do not pose a public risk
• Women are
• More likely to commit certain property offences
  (e.g. fraud)
• Less likely to commit violent and sexual offences

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International Trends in Womens Imprisonment

• USA
• 5 annual increase in prison population 1995
  2003
• Increase in sentence lengths ( sentences gt I
  year)
• Increasing proportion of the prison population
• Black and Hispanic women vastly over-represented

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• Canada
• 57 increase in women admitted to federal
  jurisdiction 1994/5 2004/5
• Increased percentage of admissions
• New Zealand
• 113 increase in sentenced female population over
  10 years
• 387 growth in female remand population

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• Australia
• 90 increase in number of female prisoners (1996
  2006)
• 76 increase in average number of female
  prisoners in Victoria (1995-2001)
• England and Wales
• 173 increase in number of women imprisoned (1992
  2002)
• Increasing proportion of the prison population
• Greatest increases among young women

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Scotland

• 73 increase in daily sentenced female population
  (1996/7-2004/5)
• 83 increase in female remand population
• Women are an increasing proportion of remanded
  and sentenced populations
• Number of women sentenced has not increased
  significantly But
• Numbers remanded have risen steeply and the
  average sentence length for those convicted has
  increased

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Characteristics of Women in Prison

• History of sexual or physical abuse
• More likely to self harm
• Dependent children/single parents
• Limited educational attainment and employment
  experience
• High incidence of drug use
• Mental health problems
• High incidence of accommodation problems on
  release

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Explanations of Womens Increasing Imprisonment

• Increase incidence of drug-related offending
• Increasing numbers of women convicted, sentence
  length or both?
• Women are not committing more serious offences
  but are receiving more severe sentences than
  before

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The Sentencing of Women Key Trends

• Women constitute an increasing proportion of the
  sentenced population
• Increase in womens imprisonment is greater than
  increase in the imprisonment of men and greatest
  among younger women
• The use of imprisonment for women is predicted to
  increase, and at a greater rate than the
  imprisonment of men
• In Scotland, the use of community sentences has
  increased but the use of fines has decreased

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Women, Criminal Justice and the Problem of
Penalty30

• Female offending and community penalties
• The gendered nature of tariff
• NOS and the masculinisation of penalty
• The appeal of imprisonment

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Pathways into Offending

• Peer influences/gaining acceptance
• Cultural pressures (e.g. consumerism)
• Risk taking/excitement
• Acceptability of offending
• Poverty/financial pressures
• Substance misuse
• Emotional/physical pressure especially partners

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Womens Criminogenic Needs

• The problem of assessing risk
• Similar criminogenic needs/risk factors?
• Factors more relevant to women
• Different relationship to offending (e.g. drugs)?

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Desistance

• Young women desist sooner than young men
• Transitions and lifestyles
• Moral rationale
• Relational aspects
• Parental attitudes
• Victimisation
• Parental responsibilities
• Drugs

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Women after Prison (Sheehan et al., 2006)

• Experiences/characteristics of persisters
• Resumption of drug use
• Pressure from partners
• Unemployment, housing instability and financial
  pressures
• Stress
• Experiences/characteristics of desisters
• Avoidance of drugs
• Resumption of family responsibilities
• Employment and stable housing
• Supportive relationships
• Strong sense of personal efficacy

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What Women Want Perspectives on Supervision

• Someone to listen/understand
• Practical support with problems
• Emotional support relationships, self esteem
• Support towards increasing self-efficacy

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What Women Value

• Not being treated like a criminal
• Being treated with respect
• Social workers balance of friendliness and
  professionalism

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Why What Works Doesnt Work

• What works and associated interventions based
  on male theory/experiences/knowledge
• Womens problems cannot be simplistically reduced
  to discrete criminogenic needs
• Structured interventions are less likely to meet
  womens styles of engagement
• Offending needs to be understood in its wider
  personal/social/economic/structural content

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What Might Work?

• Integrated, holistic, gender-appropriate
  provision
• Early intervention/prevention
• Multi-professional teams
• Abolition of short prison sentences
• Specialist courts