In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Women The Afterthought in Reentry Planning LaDonna Cissell is a single mother of three who grew up on the east side of Indianapolis. She became pregnant with her first child at fourteen and never completed school. She was incarcerated after cashing a series of counterfeit checks worth about forty-five hundred dollars . Sometimes she cashed as many as four a day, spending the money on clothing, meals, and cars. Her crimes were nonviolent. Nationally, about 50 percent of the total crimes committed by women are nonviolent . Cissell describes her time in custody as the “worst six months of my life.” She points out that her mother did not want to bring her children to see her while she was locked up and that the separation was hard on both her and her children. Her experience is not unlike that of many women who interact with the criminal justice system.1 Women have unique experiences arriving in, getting through, and recovering from the criminal justice experience. Women continue to be the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. prison population, and they bring a unique set of problems into the criminal justice system. According to a Rocky Mountain News story on women in recovery: Women are more likely than men to be addicted to more than one mood altering substance, and many addicted women report that they began using drugs after a specific traumatic event in their lives. Among women problem drug users, 35% report major depressive episodes vs. 9% of other women. Women represent 43% of clients in methamphetamine treatment, 40% of clients in cocaine treatment, 34% of those in heroin treatment and 26% of those in marijuana treatment. Moreover, about 80% of Miracle’s women have some kind of mental illness. Nearly all of them have been victims of abuse, sexual, physical, emotional , much of it in childhood. Many women do not seek treatment for 3 45 fear of losing custody of their children. Treatment is complicated by the need for child care, transportation and financial assistance.2 LaDonna Cissell’s story, noted at the beginning of this chaper, is not unlike many contemporary stories of women attempting to complete the difficult task of reentry. Even a cursory examination of the hurdles that women typically encounter —both in prison and upon release—reveals the limitations of a penal system built to house male offenders. To the extent that policy makers have focused on prison programming or reentry planning, they have generally relegated issues faced by women to the margins. Women have entered prison with a wide range of problems and related needs but have been the beneficiaries of few meaningful interventions. At the point of release, it is not uncommon for women leaving prison suffering from disabilities to find out that their condition is often more acute due to a lack of focused attention. When we add to that common foundation a frequent lack of support to ease the transition back into their communities, it is no surprise that reentry for women has been as much a dismal failure as for their male counterparts. A common misperception may begin to explain this phenomenon. Conventional wisdom suggests that criminal conduct of women constitutes such a small proportion of crimes that it need not garner much attention . Compared to men, women do represent a smaller percentage of individuals reentering communities from prison and jail. However, their numbers are rising at a much higher rate than those of men. This steady climb in the number of women offenders can be attributed to a host of factors. Some have suggested that women are engaging in increasingly more serious criminal conduct that more often exposes them to prison terms.3 Others counter that women have not become more criminally active; instead, they have simply been caught up in the fervor to sweep more people into the criminal justice system.4 A range of arrest policies for everything from domestic violence to drugs is one reason why more women are coming to the attention of criminal justice officials. Competing explanations aside, the number of women in U.S. prisons has “quintupled since 1980.”5 One phenomenon I have observed in the massive overincarceration of women in the last two decades is the casting of a wider law enforcement net. In my experience and observations, women have been incarcerated more often for nonviolent, drug-related or drug-involved crimes 46 | Women [18.219.224.103] Project MUSE (2024-04-19 13:12...

Share