Real Talk: Women
have been "correctional afterthoughts" (Blanchette, 2006) for many
years, and gender-specific programming is one of the most promising methods for
addressing the ineffective practice of treating female offenders the same as male offenders and reversing their marginalization in hopes of helping them
to become functioning members of the community.
Bringing Female Offenders Into Focus The treatment and processing of female offenders has a long history of presenting issues in the areas of policy-making, social community, and in the criminal justice system as a whole. While female criminality has historically represented a significantly lower and less violent population than its male counterpart, the number of incarcerated women continues to increase today. The females facing this uptick of harsh sentencing are mostly racially-diverse minorities from poor economic backgrounds. Limited funding, resources, programs, and goals for women in the existing prison structure continues to leave this growing criminal female population awash without clear directives on how to confront, manage, and ultimately prevent recidivism. In an effort to break the cycle of repeat and growing numbers of juvenile and adult female offenders, criminal justice professionals have turned to the idea of developing gender-specific programming for women. Typically, female offenders are subject to the treatment of programs and systems originally developed for male offenders, while the thrust behind programming tailored to women focuses on their specialized needs as well as the pathways that originally ushered them to the criminal justice system. While implementing gender-specific programs is slow-moving and not without drawbacks and pitfalls, its continued discussion and development is a positive step toward preventing and diminishing the population of female offenders. Real Talk: What is mandatory sentencing?
Mandatory minimum sentencing laws require binding prison terms of a particular length for people convicted of certain federal and state crimes. Many of the women incarcerated today are nonviolent offenders who are convicted of crimes related to property, alcohol or other drug use. They are often single mothers. (Bloom and Covington, 1998) |
Did you know...
...these numbers are largely due to the war on drugs and increases in mandatory sentencing? (Shelden, 2010)
Can we keep sweeping these women under the rug? Real Talk: RECIDIVISM
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