Gender-responsive prisons

Gender-responsive prisons (also known as gender-responsive corrections or gender-responsive programming) are prisons constructed to provide gender-specific care to incarcerated women. Contemporary sex-based prison programs were presented as a solution to the rapidly increasing number of women in the prison industrial complex and the overcrowding of California's prisons. These programs vary in intent and implementation and are based on the idea that female offenders differ from their male counterparts in their personal histories and pathways to crime.[1] Multi-dimensional programs oriented toward female behaviors are considered by many to be effective in curbing recidivism.

History
Main article: Incarceration of women

The 19th century was important because instead of relying on corporal methods of punishment, incarceration was seen as the main tool of punishment.[2] In the United States, authorities began housing women in correctional facilities separate from men in the 1870s.[3] The first American female correctional facility with dedicated buildings and staff was the Mount Pleasant Female Prison in Ossining, New York; the facility had some operational dependence on nearby Sing Sing, a men's prison.[3]

Unlike prisons designed for men in the United States, state prisons for women evolved in three waves. First, women prisoners were imprisoned alongside men in "general population," where they were subject to sexual attacks and daily forms of degradation. In an attempt to address these issues, women prisoners were removed from general population and housed separately, wherein they did not receive the same resources as men in prisons. In the third stage of development, women in prison were then housed completely separately in fortress-like prisons, where the goal of punishment was to indoctrinate women into traditional feminine roles.[4]

The history of the contemporary gender-responsiveness movement can be traced back to a selection of works written by Barbara Bloom and Stephanie Covington in the early 2000s.[5][6] Their case for, and articulation of gender-responsiveness, forms the theoretical backbone from which many others develop theories and/or criticisms of gender-responsive prisons. Many of the suggestions and implementation strategies forwarded in these texts were integral in constructing what we think of today as gender-responsive prisons.

Effect on youth

Gender-responsive prisons also deal with children in detention centers. According to research conducted between 1991 and 2003, the percent of girls being put in detention centers has increased by 98%.[7] Advocates for gender-response detention centers use statistics as a form of backing. Research has also presented 35% of girls in detention centers have experience with sexual abuse and 40% have been involved in cases involving domestic abuse.[7] A study conducted in 2015 analyzed the different effects that gender-responsive programming has on boys and girls.[8] In the findings, it was shown that gender-responsive programming works for young girls with a history of emotional trauma or mental issues.[8] Their needs are met more closely as a sense of trust within the prison community is built. Within gender-responsive programs, abused girls are given the chance to talk about challenges and safety issues, while they are promoting self-cultivation and accepting personal responsibility.[8] However, for young girls that do not have these issues, rather they are more influenced by general factors, research shows that behavioral reinforcement programming or traditional based programming are better methods in preventing recidivism.[8] Gender-responsive programming does not appear to reduce the overall rate of boys re-entering the juvenile facilities upon release because gender-responsive programming fails to consider the unique, gendered issues of young boys.[8]

Assessment

The two most popular approaches to understanding the needs of female offenders are known as the pathways perspective and the gender-responsive perspective.[4]

Gender-responsive prisons provide sociocultural and therapeutic interventions through treatment and skill building within the criminal justice system.[9]

The pathways theory has been evaluated as the unique circumstances that women are involved with, differing from those related to male offenders because of their gender, race, and class that result in criminal activity.[6] Although it has been reviewed as a series of generalizations and criticized for its dismissal of the complex and heterogeneous circumstances that influence female offenders, Kristy Holtfreter and Katelyn Wattanaporn describe the pathways approach has been widely adopted in the field of criminology and prison reform.[10] The pathways approach to gender-responsive treatment has been criticized by others in the field of criminology and prison reform, because it classifies female offenders as either victims of trauma, [physical and substance] abuse or mental illness; or as caretakers, mothers, and wives.

It is hypothesized that a multi-dimensional program oriented towards female behaviors is crucial for rehabilitation and a general improvement of all criminal justice phases. As part of this hypothesis, there are six 'guiding principles' that are fundamental for effective gender-responsive services. They are as follows: (1) acknowledge that gender makes a difference; (2) create an environment based on safety, dignity and respect; (3) address substance abuse, trauma and mental health issues through comprehensive, integrated, and culturally relevant services and appropriate supervision; (4) develop policies, practices and programs that are relational and promote healthy connections to children, family and significant others; (5) provide women with opportunities to improve their socio-economic conditions; (6) establish a system of community supervision and re-entry with comprehensive, collaborative services."[6]

A 2012 study was conducted to understand the experiences of a new cognitive skills program that compares and contrasts a gender-responsive approach with a gender-neutral approach.[11] The study involved a focus group of males and females that measured cognitive skills such as impulsivity, decision-making, interpersonal problem-solving, and influence in others. It concluded that participants were most receptive to gender-specific programs and evaluated the quality of current intervention and rehabilitation programs and whether they catered to their needs.[11]

Another study conducted in 2010 focuses on gender-responsive programs for the Residential Substance Abuse Treatment (RSAT) program in a women's correctional facility in Michigan. Data was gathered to determine how the program aids substance abusers can break their cycle with the rehabilitation program that utilizes philosophy catered to women in an effort to address the differences in perspective and process the emotional and mental information.[12]

A 2008 study focuses on the need for gender-responsive programming, but acknowledges the lack of research regarding the outcome of implementing gender-responsive prisons. The study is trying to understand whether gender-responsive needs contribute to poor prison adjustment and community recidivism. Data included the observation of women's needs that are being neglected within the prison complex.[13]

Reproductive oppression

Reproductive oppression, in the context of the carceral state, is a form of gendered violence that refers to the intentional imprisonment of women during their reproductive years, neglectful healthcare, and coerced or non-consensual sterilization procedures. Gender-Responsive prisons in part were created as a response to the mistreatment experienced by women who suffered from reproductive oppression. Policy-makers and reformists argued on behalf of gender-responsive prisons by asserting that they are better able to consider the specific health needs of women. However, critics of gender-responsive prisons have claimed that regardless of how reformed a prison is, the very nature of incarceration during one's reproductive years can be considered a form of reproductive oppression. Critics also note that increased punitive policies that criminalize both perpetrators and victims of violence against women have not only increased the number of women but the frequency of reproductive oppression.[14]

Women are more likely than men to experience parental terminations, poverty, and substance addiction, and they tend to support the notion that incarcerated women value relationships, especially familial and parental bonds.[15] Gender-responsive prisons advocate for gender-responsive treatment that allows for women to communicate relational issues, giving them the opportunity to mend broken relationships and decrease incidents of misconduct in prison.[16]

Opposition

Limitations to the current criminal justice system have set precedence to how marginalized individuals are criminalized and unable to receive proper treatment within the prisons and outside prison walls.[17] One criticism of the gender responsiveness model, is that it simply replaces the male prison norms it seeks to escape with female norms by categorizing and homogenizing women's experiences.[18]

Intersectionality

Kimberlé Crenshaw, a well-known scholar who coined the phrase intersectionality, states her findings on racialized gender violence and anti-Black racism in the carceral state in her 2012 article, From Private Violence to Mass Incarceration.[19] The current framework of mass incarceration ignores the spatial fluidity of its own persistent nature and the industrialized commodification of marginalized people. Not only that, Crenshaw also explicates the lack of intersectional lens of the framing of incarceration in regards to racialized gender and gendered race in that the dominant frame is male-focused while the focus of gender-responsive approaches to address the needs of explicit gender differences often neglects the racialized realities of particular marginalized women.[19]

While gender-responsive prisons purport to be response to the unique needs of women, often the "woman" whose needs are in question is imagined as white, straight, and middle class. In reality, the racialized nature of the prison industrial complex results in relatively high incarceration rates of women of color. When the prison is understood as a site for imposing gender norms, it is easy to imagine it as a site of imposed gender conformity and heteronormativity, white supremacy, and xenophobia on women who do not fit into this paradigm. Thus, theory of intersectionality in prison reform highlights the need to become aware of and accommodating to the experiences of oppressed individuals rather than create a punitive system of disproportionate structural disadvantage.[20]

Despite the inclusion of women in correctional facilities, there has been little focus on the impact of the carceral system intergenerationally through family and loved ones, particularly on women.[21] Incarcerating women is not a trauma solitarily felt; oftentimes these women are mothers, separated from their families. The physical, emotional, and mental separation enacts an intergenerational trauma known as natal alienation, which serves to interrupt the stability of families and their reproduction. This interrupted history, and internalized belief that their families are not worth maintaining contributes to the social death of the individual.[22] While gender-responsive prisons claim to have motherhood programs, their very existence is a weapon against the motherhood of the women of color it targets.

Queer and trans politics

Gender-responsive prisons become especially problematic for those incarcerated people who present as gender non-conforming or transgender. Trans and queer people, especially those of color or those from low-income backgrounds, are directly targeted for imprisonment. This may partly be due to the criminalization of people who do not conform to norms of white heteropatriarchy. Another potential explanation is, because queer, trans, and gender non-conforming people face stigmatization, they are more likely to experience discrimination and violence that places them proximate to illicit activity and poverty. Problems may arise when determining in what gender prison to place the individual. Once placed, that person may encounter traumatic experiences from strip searches by a police officer of an alternate gender, or increased rates of rape and assault. By using the gender binary to order the prison system, it the prison enacts an additional violence on non-binary people by placing them in an environment where their bodies are made hyper-visible, and thus more susceptible to violence.

The discussion of queer and trans liberation politics in relation to the carceral state is important in understanding the widespread and interconnected nature of state violence on marginalized people, and presents a potential for an abolitionist framework.[23]

In discussing the relation between gender-responsive prisons and individuals who identify as gender non-conforming or transgender, research has been presented in bringing forth injustices within the prison setting. Research introduced has presented the term gender outlaws, a term in reference to individuals who do not commit to gender specific action.[24] In the fight for Queer & Trans Politics, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project works with people regardless of their racial and gender background in ensuring a discrimination-free environment.

Penal politics

Gender-responsive (GR) penal policies allow for gendered governance where gendered punishment dictates how women should behave, targeting and governing females through the penal structure. Furthermore, GR penal policies coerce women to adhere to parenting and motherhood ideals belonging to the normative, white middle-class values.[25] GR penal codes are also argued to be punitive rather than rehabilitative; thus, a possible solution may include collaboration between state institutions as well as the local community.

Rehabilitation

Bloom suggests that certain crimes committed by women do not merit incarceration but instead should be 'treated' with psychological assistance and therapy.[6]

In a study conducted in 2007, focusing on women in prison with alcohol problems, gender-responsive models are noted as important. Mendoza, a professor at the National Autonomous University, presents how social structures evident within gender-responsive prisons have limited the access and resources women are given in dealing with alcohol addiction.[26]

Gender-responsive treatment (GRT) calls for clinically trained workers to establish a women-focused program where the aim is to facilitate rehabilitation and prevent drug relapse. The Helping Women Recover program is organized in four modules: self module, relationship module, sexuality module, and spirituality module.[27] Calhoun, Messina, Cartier, and Torres, members of Integrated Substance Abuse Programs (ISAP) at UCLA, discovered that incarcerated women expressed interest in learning the reasons for their drug use, specifically how their familial relationships and childhood traumas impacted their substance abuse.[27]

Health

A constant topic in gender responsive prisons discusses the role mental has within gender responsive prisons. Studies addressing the mental health process of women have determined that at least 60% of women in state prison have disclosed going through some sort of physical or sexual abuse.[28] These statistics provide a foundation for individuals in support of gender-responsive prisons in presenting that individuals are faced with different forms of abuse in the prison system.

Studies have shown that women tend to use drugs as a form of self-medication for depression and anxiety, which result from traumatic childhood and adolescent experiences. Saxena and Messina, Ph.D. scholars in the Integrated Substance Abuse Programs (ISAP) at UCLA, and Christine Grella, a professor for ISAP, argue that gender-responsive treatment's (GRT) multimodal approach allows for inclusivity in which the monolithic Therapeutic Community (TC) treatment lacks.[29]

Abolitionist approaches

Advocates of prison reform suggest that the current criminal justice system does not prevent criminal activity and is therefore broken. Abolitionists, on the other hand, argue that the system is not "broken," but rather is working perfectly by its own logic of a system that is racist, classist, homophobic, etc.[17]

Abolitionists seek to shift discussions surrounding gender-responsive prisons toward their existence as reformist reforms. By sanitizing the appearance and rhetoric of the prison, gender-responsiveness programs allow the carceral state to achieve greater sustainability by supporting violence, criminalization, and deportation.[30] Reforming the criminal justice system leaves unadressed systemic issues such as poverty and inaccessibility to healthcare or education. Therefore, abolitionists affirm using transformative justice to reimagine a world that does not support incarceration including surveillance, deportation and detention centers, criminalization, and violence.

Abolitionists critical of gender-responsive prisons specifically contend that the use of gender-responsive prison programs propagates the myth of individual rehabilitation, and that it takes what it, in essence, structural inequality and transforms it into a problem with a prison focused solution. Abolitionist Bree Carlton expands on her criticism of gender-responsive programs in her article "Pathways, Race and Gender Responsive Reform: Through an Abolitionist Lens".[31] She takes a four-stage approach to addressing the problem of gender-responsive programs specifically in Victoria, Australia; these four stages include: addressing the significance of the adoption of the 'pathways approach' and its use of the rehabilitation defense of prisons, discussing the constructions of race and culture in gender responsive discourses, acknowledging the disproportionate number of Vietnamese women incarcerated in Victoria and the racialized implications of the 'pathways approach,' and finally a reflection on the issue of prison reform.

See also

References
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