Paper Title
Intersections of Trauma, Gender, and Incarceration: Addressing Inmate Service Needs Holistically
Location
Room 217, West Center
Keywords
Incarceration, Interpersonal Violence, Trauma, Jail, Service Needs
Start Date
April 2016
End Date
April 2016
Abstract
With the rate of women’s incarceration significantly outpacing that of men’s, combined with the fact that the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, there is an urgent need to delineate incarcerated women’s pathways to crime, with a focus on the role of gender and trauma, in order to more clearly design appropriate services to meet incarcerated women’s needs. Decades of research have resulted in policies and practices designed to address the needs of incarcerated men, but we cannot simply apply these to women as a one-size-fits-all strategy. My presentation reports findings of my mixed-method research conducted from 2008 to 2010 with women incarcerated in a large, county jail in North Carolina. Thirty life-history interviews, nine focus groups, and 60 questionnaires reveal the centrality of trauma, particularly in the form of interpersonal violence, in incarcerated women’s lives. In the absence of positive resources (e.g., counseling, substance abuse treatment), women’s attempts to cope with trauma often increase their risks for incarceration as well as further trauma. In addition to providing trauma-based treatment, decreasing women’s recidivism requires macro-level examinations of policies and practices that marginalize women economically and socially.
Intersections of Trauma, Gender, and Incarceration: Addressing Inmate Service Needs Holistically
Room 217, West Center
With the rate of women’s incarceration significantly outpacing that of men’s, combined with the fact that the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, there is an urgent need to delineate incarcerated women’s pathways to crime, with a focus on the role of gender and trauma, in order to more clearly design appropriate services to meet incarcerated women’s needs. Decades of research have resulted in policies and practices designed to address the needs of incarcerated men, but we cannot simply apply these to women as a one-size-fits-all strategy. My presentation reports findings of my mixed-method research conducted from 2008 to 2010 with women incarcerated in a large, county jail in North Carolina. Thirty life-history interviews, nine focus groups, and 60 questionnaires reveal the centrality of trauma, particularly in the form of interpersonal violence, in incarcerated women’s lives. In the absence of positive resources (e.g., counseling, substance abuse treatment), women’s attempts to cope with trauma often increase their risks for incarceration as well as further trauma. In addition to providing trauma-based treatment, decreasing women’s recidivism requires macro-level examinations of policies and practices that marginalize women economically and socially.
Comments
Please feel free to call me with any questions at 704-770-7627. My name is Catherine Fuentes and I am in the anthropology department at UNCC. This is my first time attending (or submitting to present) with SEWSA. I've heard great things about you all from my colleagues in our Women's Studies department at UNCC. My research focuses on service needs for women in the Mecklenburg county jail using anthropological methods and theories to more specifically address the role of trauma in women's lives that result in unique pathways to jail and thus justify unique intervention and policy. I am not entirely sure if that fits in with the conference or not. Give me a call for any other information. I also am not sure what the "full text" of the presentation is. I am used to presenting using some power point slides and maybe notes but not reading from a paper. Do I need a full paper here and need it now to download?