Women on Probation and Parole: A Feminist Critique of Community Programs and Services

2: Dominant Crimes

2 Dominant Crimes My problem’s not drugs or alcohol. It’s anger. cassandra, Traditional County Cassandra, whose comment opens this chapter, recognizes that women on probation and parole are not a homogeneous group. She was repeatedly convicted for assaultive behavior, but she knows that other women who break the law are substance abusers. She sees their patterns of crime as different from her own. Early in my work with the data, I also saw distinct subgroups of women on the county caseloads who engaged in different dominant illegal activities . The subgroup distinctions are crucial to making sense of the women’s experiences on probation or parole. The supervising officers’ tactics and the women’s actions must be analyzed and understood in relation to dominant illegal activity. The signs of women’s success are related to dominant illegal activity. For example, leaving an intimate partner signifies success for women whose crimes result from partners’ demands or persuasion. Alternatively , for women who break the law because they are addicted to drugs, success equates to overcoming addiction. The two counties can be meaningfully compared only when separate assessments are developed for the different subgroups. I also had to consider the outcomes of most importance to each subgroup to make relevant comparisons. It was fairly easy to identify the dominant crime for most women. The proportions of women in each category were very similar for the two counties (see table 2.1). Almost two-thirds of the women’s dominant crimes were substance-centered. Possessing illegal substances and committing economic offenses to earn money to purchase drugs dominated their crimes. Because my initial analysis showed no background, supervision, or outcome difference between women who abuse alcohol only and the much larger proportion that uses other drugs, I combined women with alcohol and drug problems. [ 28 ] the women on probation and parole Economic-only offenders who committed crimes such as embezzlement, shoplifting, and welfare fraud constituted the next largest subgroup. For thetwocounties,17.1percentofthewomenwereeconomic-onlyoffenders. Drug and alcohol addictions did not drive the economic offenders: many had never tried any illegal substance, while others used marijuana or alcohol only sporadically or had stopped using drugs after their teen years. Less than five percent of the women had crimes dominated by violence; marijuana cultivation; child maltreatment; aiding and abetting a male partner (called partner-influenced); or drug manufacture, distribution, and selling. Violence might be one-time or repeated. Women who broke the law only by aiding criminal intimate partners or by maltreating children made up a small part of probation and parole caseloads. Just two women were convicted for felony driving offenses alone. Three women died during the study year, and insufficient information made it impossible to determine the dominant illegal activity of seventeen women (4.6 percent). substance-centered women Mary Anne, most recently convicted for possessing a controlled substance , exemplifies substance-centered women. She first used marijuana, table 2.1. Dominant crime subgroups of women in the study Percent (and number) by county gender responsive traditional combined Dominant crime (N ⫽ 167) (N ⫽ 202) (N ⫽ 369) Substance-centered 65.3 (109) 65.3 (132) 65.3 (241) Economic only 22.2 (37) 12.9 (26) 17.1 (63) Violence-involved 2.4 (4) 4.5 (9) 3.5 (13) Marijuana cultivation 5.4 (9) 1.5 (3) 3.3 (12) Child maltreatment 1.2 (2) 3.5 (7) 2.4 (9) Partner-influenced 1.8 (3) 1.5 (3) 1.6 (6) Drug manufacture and trade 0.0 1.5 (3) 0.8 (3) Died during study 0.0 1.5 (3) 0.8 (3) Felony driving offenses 0.6 (1) 0.5 (1) 0.5 (2) Unclear 1.2 (2) 7.4 (15) 4.6 (17) Dominant Crimes [ 29 ] amphetamines, and speed at age fourteen, and crack at eighteen. Her history of convictions resulted from theft, two probation violations, and possessing a controlled substance. At thirty-six, Mary Anne’s most recent arrest was for shoplifting at a discount grocery store. During the arrest, the police searched her and found a baggie full of methamphetamines in her purse. During the year of supervision, she tested positive for methamphetamine use. Although her criminal history includes probation violations and shoplifting, these all result from drug use. Mary Anne’s story is typical of the women that another researcher referred to as “street women” (Daly 1992, 14). Locating...