Abstract
This book is a comprehensive, compelling text in which Katherine van Wormer artfully addresses areas that are absent from the literature on criminal justice and the helping professions as they relate to the special needs of girls and women offenders. As a feminist, sociologist, and social work scholar with 35 years’ experience, van Wormer presents a gendered lens for practitioners in areas of corrections, also for educators, policy analysts, and researchers who seek a multifaceted approach to understanding the issues related to female offenders. She provides a window to the past, highlighting the historical context of correctional policies that shifted from a male prison model, to progressive rehabilitative reform and then to a gender-equality approach. Taking the specific needs of female offenders into account, an equity approach that acknowledges difference is the preferred model in working with women and girls, whether locally or globally.
Noting that “a paradigm shift is in the wind,” the book is brilliantly constructed as it underscores the contradictions and paradoxes within the penal system—a system that is steeped in a traditional punitive approach, although aiming for the goal of rehabilitation and restorative justice. The book promotes possibilities for resilience and hope in the programs, interventions, and life skills advanced for working with female offenders during incarceration or in their reentry process.
The author’s writing style is a notable strength as she convincingly advocates for a multidimensional, gender-sensitive approach while she systematically dissects the micro- and macrolevel dynamics that affect policy, programs, and research on female offenders. Apart from the biological, psychological, social, and cultural aspects that influence the differences in male and female criminality, the narratives illustrate how sexual, physical, and emotional victimization are common denominators among young women and girls within the juvenile and criminal justice systems.
The book provides valuable insights into profiles and pathways that lead to female delinquency and crime. These pathways, or systems of oppression, include poverty, race, and class, which intersect with individual circumstances, such as domestic violence, substance abuse, or neighborhood location, to produce a condition described by Richie (1996) as gender entrapment. Highlighting crime as a social construct, van Wormer points out that to achieve the goal of rehabilitation and restorative justice, the stories and voices of girls and women offenders must be heard.
Taking into account the specificity of gender roles and the impact of the separation of female offenders from their families, this book builds an argument for a gender-sensitive solution-focused approach that goes beyond the confines of the prison. Van Wormer advocates for reentry programs in neighborhoods and communities where female offenders have to reintegrate. These programs are inclusive of a strengths and empowerment perspective, reinforced by “a language of affirmation” and enhanced motivation.
Van Wormer concludes by reiterating the central theme of restorative justice and its healing powers. She suggests that while context is important, cognizance must be paid to the subthemes like power relations. She remains optimistic and believes in the resilience of the human spirit, noting that female offenders can change.