A Feminist Call for Transforming the Criminal Justice System

Abstract

In the past 30 years, the number of incarcerated women in the United States has increased at a faster rate than that of men. This article outlines the ideologies and mechanisms of the “Prison Nation” and calls on social workers to conceptualize the effects of mass incarceration of women as an urgent social justice issue. We call for feminist social workers to adopt an anti-oppressive orientation to justice-involved women, build social work responses around national reform measures, and advocate for decarceration and restorative justice as a paradigm for responding to women’s involvement in systems which criminalize them.

In the past 30 years, the unprecedented phenomenon of mass imprisonment in the United States including increased prison admissions and longer sentences has resulted in the second highest incarceration rate in the world (Walmsley, 2016). Angela Davis was one of the first scholars to theorize the interconnected systems that shape and propel the growth of the prison industrial complex, a term she coined to describe the overlapping interests of government and corporations that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as the dominant mode of addressing social problems (2003). Within this buildup of the prison industrial complex, the proportion of women admitted to jails and prisons has increased at an even faster rate than that of men, driven by changes in sentencing policies for drug crimes (Lynch, 2012). The number of women in prison has increased 50% since 2000, while the number of men in prison increased 18% during the same period (Walmsley, 2016). When totals include women detained in jails and sentenced to prisons, more than 200,000 women are incarcerated in the United States (Walmsley, 2015).

It is important to understand women’s criminalized behaviors within a sociopolitical context that includes their experiences of violent victimizations, poverty, and marginalization. The pathways perspective, as established by feminist researchers (Daly, 1992; Gilfus, 1993), has confirmed that specific childhood and adult adverse experiences occur at higher rates and in more extreme forms in the lives of criminalized women as compared to criminalized men and that there are distinctive effects for women due to men’s violence toward women embedded in oppressive patriarchal social structures (Comack, 2006).

Changes in the ideologies and policies related to the punishment of women’s behaviors labeled as criminal have produced what Beth Richie (2012) describes as the Prison Nation. Richie’s conceptualization of the Prison Nation offers a contextualized framework to understand not only the structures of social control that contribute to the increase of women entering prison but also the kinds of collateral consequences that ensue. Richie focuses on interpersonal and state-sanctioned violence against women within the context of women’s experiences of poverty and marginalization.

Because the design of the criminal justice system has been cloaked in “law and order” rhetoric, and public sentiment about punishment for “crime” is fueled by mainstream media and politics, many people, including social workers, have been unaware of the inherent social justice issues in the buildup of the Prison Nation (O’Brien & Ortega, 2015). The decontextualization of women’s crime is a process whereby the social and institutional contexts relevant to the criminalization of women’s behaviors are minimized (Richie, 2012). This occurs through individualization or concentration on individual traits and characteristics of women rather than gendered interpersonal and systemic factors. For example, some authors note that women’s violence is pathologized through an exclusive focus on trauma, emotional disregulation, and mental illness, which locates the cause as within the individual rather than in social context (Comack & Brickey, 2007). A focus on intrapsychic dynamics of women’s criminalized behavior can shape suppositions about women’s motivations for that behavior, their capacity for, and investment in, crime. The conclusions that are drawn have potential ramifications for policy decisions and how women are treated within the spheres of social services, law enforcement, the judiciary, and corrections (Gilbert, 2002; Pollock & Davis, 2005).

Feminist scholars have promoted the development of research and theory embedded in traditions that seek to provide a detailed backdrop of the social and institutional contexts within which women’s behaviors are criminalized. Women’s criminalized behavior is constituted by the body of competing discourses that define variations on the phenomena termed women’s crime. A systemic perspective reorients us toward the outlines of interpersonal and structural influences—lines of force within which women are caught and respond to. Feminist writing demonstrates that these influences include structural forces that are intimately related to power and resources, or the lack thereof (Crenshaw, 2012; Gilfus, 1993; Sered & Norton-Hawk, 2014). Richie (2012) describes these structural forces in her discussion of the Prison Nation including punishing policies eliminating support for mothers and children in poverty and demanding conformity with dominant cultural norms (heterosexual nuclear families); the criminalization of impoverished women of color including those who are the victims of male interpersonal and state violence; ideological practices that promote conservative values; laws limiting cultural expression; and an ongoing marginalization of those who do not conform to these policies.

We hope to raise consciousness regarding how the personal is political (Bricker-Jenkins & Hooyman, 1986) for these women whose survival behaviors have been criminalized. We call on social workers to understand the criminal justice system as an interlocking set of policies that create the Prison Nation and to conceptualize this as an urgent social justice issue for our field that is manifested across multiple settings and populations. Our social work values and ethics demand that we work actively to address the effects of patriarchy and empower women whose voices have been silenced. We use Richie’s (2012) conceptualization of The Prison Nation and the context of feminist principles to illuminate the social effects and resulting crisis surrounding the mass imprisonment of women. As outlined above, the intersecting marginalized identities that these women face must be understood within the framework of cumulative and intersecting oppressions (Mehrotra, 2010). We concur with Richie that not only have women in the criminal justice system already experienced multiple oppressions but that the system itself is a vehicle of oppression through state-sanctioned violence. We argue that a feminist approach to addressing this systemic injustice is grounded by an anti-oppressive social work practice (AOP).

AOP is rooted in feminist, postmodern, antiracist, progressive theories that promote inclusion and equity (Morgaine & Capous-Desyllas, 2015). Following feminist principles, such as ending patriarchy, empowerment, understanding the personal as political and consciousness raising (Bricker-Jenkins & Hooyman, 1986), AOP explicitly addresses the need to transform structural oppression and to link micro- and macropractices. The “sociopolitical context of the lived experiences of their participants” must be recognized by social workers using AOP (Morgaine & Capous-Desyllas, 2015, p. 24). Altering power structures, such as those implicated in the Prison Nation, is the ultimate goal of AOP (Morgaine & Capous-Desyllas, 2015). Not only can anti-oppressive theory offer an avenue for dismantling individualized pathology-based narratives of women in prison, but it can also shed light on the ways women resist the multiple oppressive forces in their lives (Pollack, 2004).

We argue that feminist social workers can adopt an anti-oppressive orientation to justice-involved women advocating for the reallocation of state and federal funds to address basic needs, reduce trauma related to women’s experiences as victims of violence, support family development in the process of reintegration, and promote alternative community-based sanctions for increased community safety. Effective feminist social work practice requires an analysis of the policies that surround involvement in the criminal justice system to enable practitioners to address the grave effects of the mass incarceration of women. We propose the potential of restorative justice as a new paradigm for responding to women’s criminalized behaviors as a route toward decarceration.

Literature Review

A majority of incarcerated women are impoverished due to a lack of education and legitimate employment and are marginalized due to their experiences of sexual and/or physical abuse leading to addiction and trauma (O’Brien, 2013). The interconnection of extreme racial segregation and economic inequality coupled with targeted law enforcement efforts, and federal penalties in response to drug crimes, results in a disproportionate number of incarcerated women of color (Richie, 2012). In addition, many women are held in jail pretrial, before a determination of their guilt or innocence, for extended periods of time, often years, because they lack the funds necessary to make bail or pay a private attorney (Sered & Norton-Hawk, 2014).

The majority of women in state and federal prisons are convicted of nonviolent drug-related, property, or public order offenses and about one third of women incarcerated in state prisons and 4.4% of women in federal prisons are convicted of crimes classified as “violent.” In comparison, over half of men in state prison are convicted of a violent offense (Carson, 2015). Increased rates of arrest and convictions for drug-related charges affect impoverished women of color disproportionately and reflect women’s lack of power in the drug trade and therefore lack of information with which to bargain down their sentence (Sokoloff, 2005). Drug-related crimes account for 24% of women in state prisons and are the most common conviction (58.8%) for women in federal prison, primarily drug trafficking charges.

Of women imprisoned for violent crimes in state prisons, 11.2% are sentenced for murder (including nonnegligent manslaughter), 8.8% for robbery, 8.5% for assault, 2.5% for manslaughter, 2.4% for sexual assault, and 3.7% for crimes classified as other. In federal facilities, the largest number (1.7% of all federal female prisoners) of women incarcerated for violent crimes are sentenced for robbery (Carson, 2015). While media portrayals claim that women are becoming more violent, based on increased arrests of women for assaults since the 1980s, Schwartz, Steffensmeier, and Feldmeyer (2009) argue that putative increases in women’s violent behavior (as measured by arrests) is largely a social construction. Willison (2016) found that women’s violent offending differs dramatically from men’s in that it most often occurred in the context of an existing relationship and were more likely to take place in a domestic setting, weapon use was primarily defensive, and victim injuries were limited. In this study, 46.8% of the women (N = 866) were survivors of intimate partner violence, and it follows that the numbers of male intimate partners who were victims in this sample reflects the women’s responses to intimate partner violence, as well as shifts in domestic violence mandatory arrest laws that have increased the rates of arrest and conviction for women (Dichter, 2013).

A significant portion of women’s crime is related to poverty and women’s role as primary provider for children (Alfred & Chlup, 2009; Cullen, Jonson, & Stohr, 2013). In the state system, 28.4% and in the federal system 18.3% of women are incarcerated for property crimes. The most common property crimes are fraud, burglary, and theft. Women convicted of public order crimes make up 9.2% of state female prisoners and 17.9% of federal female prisoners. The most frequent public order crimes for which women in state prison are sentenced include driving under the influence, prostitution-related offenses, court offenses such as not paying court fines, failure to perform court-ordered sanctions, and liquor law violations.

Women’s time in prison is characterized by multiple and interlocking harms related to isolation from family and friends, physical and mental health challenges, and decreased access to treatment and programming due to overcrowding and underfunding. Amnesty International (1999) reported on violations of incarcerated women’s human rights in the United States including rape by correctional officers or staff, the use of shackles during illness or pregnancy, extended solitary confinement, and lack of access to mental health and medical services. More recently, Van Gundy and Baumann-Grau (2013) described the prevalence of physical, sexual, and medical abuse in correctional facilities. Policies deemed “essential” for security, but which are questionable in necessity, can be retraumatizing for women who are survivors of abuse, including strip searches (McCulloch & George, 2009). There are also lasting effects stemming from imprisonment, which include deepening poverty, loss of children (Allen, Flaherty, & Ely, 2010), exacerbated mental health problems (Harner & Riley, 2013), poor health-care services, lack of community reentry assistance (O’Brien & Lee, 2006), and marginalization due to the stigma of postincarceration identity (van Olphen, Eliason, Freudenberg, & Barnes, 2009).

Over the last century, the U.S. government has attempted to control illegal drugs mostly by punitive means although many other developed countries adopt a public health stance. Recent progress in investigating the neurochemistry of addiction points to a variety of responses but has not influenced the availability of treatment as an alternative to punishment (Chandler, Fletcher, & Volkow, 2009). Peter Drucker (2013) argues that the fixation on punishment in the United States has led to an “epidemic” based on its size, its onset, its reproduction, and its location in mostly socially marginalized neighborhoods. He points out that this public health “disaster” (p. 38) is the result of political and economic interests coupled with public policies fueled by the expenditure of trillions of dollars of public funds and exhibits all the characteristics of an infectious disease. Drucker points out continued racial disparities in the use of incarceration, the still increasing rate of incarceration of women and girls, and federal detention centers for immigrants, including women and their children who are seeking asylum to escape violence in their countries of origin (Ortega, Graybill, & Lasch, 2015). Drucker (2013) suggests that addressing the public health epidemic of mass incarceration requires an epidemiological approach to address it on the primary (prevention), secondary (recidivism), and tertiary (long-term effects) levels.

Ideologies and Polices of the Prison Nation

Within the Prison Nation (Richie, 2012), repressive shifts in public policy coupled with law and order rhetoric have led to an escalation of male violence against black women who do not fit the mold of battered women due to the other manifestations of power imbalances they experience related to race, sexuality, and class. This combination of punishing policies, and institutional mandates that push marginalized populations into “dominant cultural expectations,” has led to the increasing isolation and criminalization of black and other disempowered women who are also victimized by interpersonal and structural violence (INCITE, 2001).

Certain national policies reflect and support the ideologies of the Prison Nation. Since the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, social welfare policies have become more focused on control and limitation of financial assistance, removing a safety net that had existed for impoverished women and their children. The name of the act itself reflects the increase in rhetoric about personal responsibility, specifically directed at women. The idea that women just need to learn to be better workers ignores their constrained choices, given a lack of childcare and viable employment (Sered & Norton-Hawk, 2014). When women turn to survival behaviors, these are criminalized, stripping the contextual factors of poverty and institutional racism from the analysis. Madonna Maidment (2006) terms these processes in Canada “neoliberal and neoconservative strategies of criminalization” and points to the obstacles women face upon release from prison including continued social control.

Crenshaw (2012) points out that the individualization of women’s social problems supports the ideology and policies of punishment by reframing structural inequities in social systems as individual failings and cultural inadequacies. She continues: “Consequentially, social problems that are disproportionately visited upon poor, racially marginalized communities have been framed in ways that prime relevant publics to accept surveillance and punishment as appropriate solutions” (p. 11).

Another necessary ingredient for the buildup of the Prison Nation is the social and financial disinvestment in impoverished communities of color and subsequent concentration of disadvantage that ensues (Richie, 2012). As more monies are delegated to expanding the criminal justice system, less is available for education and community-based investments such as job training, social services, and support for women and children. These trends contribute to women being in more danger from violent victimization and having limited options for making a living, leaving them vulnerable to engaging in criminalized survival behaviors (Crenshaw, 2012; Gilfus, 1993). Richie (2012) explains that the social restructuring that has occurred in order to support the expansion of the Prison Nation is focused in three areas. First, certain communities are targeted for economic divestment and extreme disadvantage results. Second, market-based tactics are elevated to resist advocates’ efforts to repel divestment. And third, black women who are survivors of male violence and who do not conform to the traditional mainstream concept of gender oppression are criminalized and further marginalized.

Richie (2012) uses three compiled examples of women who demonstrate the intersections of punishing policies and individual and structural violence to illustrate the workings of the Prison Nation. “Tanya,” is an impoverished, black 15-year-old who leaves her newborn baby in a dumpster. Richie describes the media hype and stereotypical “narrative” labeling Tanya as “ruthless, irresponsible, and brutally uncaring” (p 5). This narrative promotes the “racialized formation of gender and class” (p. 6) assuming young black women are not fit to be mothers. This narrative, however, ignores that Tanya had been repeatedly physically abused and controlled by her boyfriend and raped by her uncle, and was too scared to turn to her family or community for help. Tanya and young women like her are portrayed and treated as criminals and charged with neonaticide, rather than understood as survivors who need safety and recovery.

The second example is “Ms. B,” a 50-year-old black woman living in an almost empty housing project being demolished, surrounded by reduced public services in a community that was targeted for “urban renewal.” Ms. B. became the victim of physical, sexual, and verbal abuse at the hands of five white undercover police officers which persisted over the course of many months despite her attempts to file complaints with city agencies and alert rape crisis centers. The police used their guns, extreme violence, and placing drugs on her person to intimidate both Ms. B. and her family. Ms. B’s story exemplifies the ways in which state power, white male supremacy, and violence against women are institutionalized in the Prison Nation.

The third example takes place in Greenwich Village, NYC, when a group of black, lesbian-identified young women were sexually harassed and physically assaulted by an African American man who made derogatory remarks regarding their perceived sexual orientation. As the attacker’s violence escalated, the young women defended themselves physically and were assisted by two white men. The attacker was not charged and the two white men were not questioned. The jury was almost all white and the prosecution promoted a racist, homophobic atmosphere at the trial, depicting the young women and their nonnormative gender appearance as dangerous to the city. The seven young women were charged with “gang assault” and three took plea bargains. Four of the young women, who became known as the “New Jersey 4,” were found guilty in a trial and sentenced to long prison terms, in one case, 7 years.

Richie (2012) notes the absence of response to these women’s abuse by the mainstream or feminist-based antiviolence movements, gay rights groups, or racial justice community organizations. She argues that these stories represent many more like them and have in common the experiences of women who are marginalized and disadvantaged, violently victimized by men, and impacted by conservative social and criminal justice system policies that ignore underlying social problems and support the subjugation of women. She also addresses how the antiviolence movement was co-opted by the interests of aligning with existing power structures and state institutions. This resulted in diminished attention to structural change around gender inequality and racial injustice and ultimately further disempowered marginalized communities of color and those outside the mainstream. The almost exclusive use of the criminal justice system to respond to men’s violence against women does not take into account issues of race and class disparities in how the system operates, and, Richie argues, has become part of the Prison Nation policies which, rather than addressing structural change, promote a sole focus on punishing decontextualized individual behaviors.

Collateral Consequences of Incarceration

There are enduring effects of long-term and serial incarcerations for women themselves, and for their children, families, and communities. Because of women’s role as primary caretakers, it appears there is a lower threshold for negative effects on families and communities related to incarcerated women as compared to men (Kruttschnitt, 2010). The disadvantage that African American women experience due to institutionalized racism is compounded by postfelony restrictions that constrain their employment options and community participation (Crenshaw, 2012). In addition, the disproportionate buildup of black and poor individuals residing in prison facilities has contributed to women returning to communities where they have little capital or support for rebuilding their lives (Flavin, 2004).

The majority of women in prison are mothers: More than 150,000 minor children in the United States have a mother in prison. In the years between 1991 and 2007, the number of children with an incarcerated mother more than doubled, and black children were 7.5 times more likely than white children, and Hispanic children 2.5 times more likely than white children, to have a parent in prison (Glaze & Marushcak, 2010). Because women’s prisons are often located far from the children’s home, contact with children is often infrequent or nonexistent (Women’s Prison Association, 2006). Maternal incarceration more often results in disrupted living situations for children than paternal incarceration (Hagan & Foster, 2012).

The disciplinary community-based restrictions placed on those convicted of a felony create what Wacquant (2000) describes as the “civic death” of persons who have undergone imprisonment characterized by disenfranchisement ranging from occupational to political. The loss of citizenship rights often compromises the individual’s capacity to meet the expectations required to remain free in the community. In addition, mass incarceration of women has a significant impact on the economic and social instability of low-income, urban communities of color (Sered & Horton-Hawk, 2014).

Discussion and Recommendations

Direct Social Work Practice

Social workers are responsible for providing services to incarcerated women, those in transition to the community, and those involved in mental health courts (Sarteschi, & Vaughn, 2013), and drug courts (Mendoza, Linley, & Nochajski, 2013). However, we lack a common conceptual framework for understanding and responding to the ways in which the buildup of the Prison Nation is relevant for social work practice. AOP offers one such approach to liberatory direct practice. Feminist social work practice and AOP converge to support the use of relational approaches, addressing power relations and challenging oppression, attempting to empower marginalized women, and using practitioner reflexivity to assess structural harms (Morgaine & Capous-Desyllas, 2015).

An example of AOP is critiquing and dismantling structures that decontextualize women’s criminalized behaviors. Social workers are asked to engage in “risk assessment” with women focused on addiction, self-harm, parenting, violence, and other criminalized behavior. The risk/need/responsivity paradigm has become paramount in the justice system for managing sentencing, classification, and probation/parole decisions. This approach assumes that an individual’s needs and related risks can be assessed and supervised. Although identification of gender-specific needs/risk has influenced the development of ideas about “gender-responsive” correctional strategies, the importance of attention to the context of women’s crime has been largely lost on correctional systems (Hannah-Moffat, 2006). Policies have not taken into account that “‘risk’ is gendered as well as racialized and that risk operates as a gendering strategy” (p. 184). Pollack (2011) warns that gender-specific risks/needs of women may get lost in translation when shaped into penal system policies and become another means of state control. Social workers can influence policy in multiple settings providing a necessary critique of the ways in which punitive correctional and child welfare systems focus on women’s individual thinking and behavior rather than structural inequities.

Research

Research that builds our understanding of criminalized women contributes to “advocacy and social work leadership to establish national policy on criminal justice issues” (National Association of Social Workers, 2009, p. 331). Feminist social workers have a commitment to social justice which includes not only creating research useful for policy makers but also raising awareness of inequities in the justice system that disproportionately impact impoverished women of color (O’Brien, & Ortega, 2015). Feminist scholars are engaged with the complex process of expanding the theory of intersectionality in order to gain capacity for designing feminist research. Current thinking reflects a conceptualization of intersectionality as a continuum, shifting in response to particular circumstances and research projects (Mehrotra, 2010). Mattsson (2014) provides a specific framework for using intersectionality as a tool in critical reflection for investigating and deconstructing structural oppression and power dimensions related to race, class, and sexuality. Such a process could enable practitioners to work with formerly incarcerated women to analyze and build empowering beliefs and actions.

One potential avenue for transformative research with criminalized women is the use of Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR). FPAR promotes the empowerment of participants by engagement in all aspects of the research project including the development of lines of inquiry, interpretation of data, and actions based on results. For marginalized populations, such as women who have been incarcerated, this can be a significant avenue toward self-efficacy (Reid & Frisby, 2008). FPAR is consistent with feminist values and offers a set of “participatory principles” that help to equalize power differentials between researchers and participants to assess women’s needs and to challenge oppressive policies.

Policy Changes

The buildup of the Prison Nation has serious social and political consequences, particularly as states and the federal system have begun to recognize the associated costs. We are beginning to see a shift in policies that echoes a public opinion that the system is in need of major reform. For example, one of the first public opinion polls to reflect a call for reform concluded that “most people reject a purely punitive approach” and endorse “a balanced, multifaceted solution that focuses on prevention and rehabilitation in concert with other remedies” (Open Society Institute, 2002, p. 1). There has also been a renewed interest in treating addiction, especially given the proportion of adults serving prison terms for drug-related convictions. The National Association of Drug Court Professionals points to the national success of drug court diversion programs for treatment and effective outcomes (Kirchner, 2015).

Across the nation, and in the case of California by court order, criminal justice systems have begun to investigate options to decrease the number of those incarcerated. While decarceration is not yet as familiar or likely as incarceration, the bipartisan push to shorten the sentences of nonviolent drug offenders has taken hold in every state and was underscored most recently by President Obama’s commutation of the sentences of 46 nonviolent federal prisoners who, in the fervor of the war on drugs, received lengthy sentences for crack cocaine offenses. While this number of individual commutations is a small percentage of the thousands held in prison for nonviolent drug crimes including marijuana possession and sales (Hindin, 2015), the commutations reinforce the movement toward a different paradigm of justice.

Prevention of further prison admissions requires first, the changing of drug laws and penalties including mandatory minimum sentences that restrict judicial discretion by state or federal law. In 1986, Congress approved mandatory minimum sentences for drug possession and sales under the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 meant to be a tool for identifying drug “kingpins” but disproportionately overpenalized women who lived with partners and so would be caught in the net of conspiracy without actual involvement in the production or sales (Acosta, 2015). Rinaldo and Rinaldo (2013) argue that it would be far more effective to provide increased treatment for opiate dependence, to address what the Center for Disease Control calls an epidemic that has been especially pernicious for women.

Since 2000, at least 29 states have taken steps to roll back mandatory sentences and a policy report examining the impact of these changes found that at least three states (California, New Jersey, and New York) achieved a 25% reduction in their prison populations (Mauer & Ghandnoosh, 2014). Front-end approaches to reducing mass incarceration include advocating on the state or federal level to reduce all drug sentencing minimums, increasing the use of drug treatment diversion, and increasing access to community-based treatment services for addiction.

Criminal Legal System Changes

In addition to changing the laws and policies driving drug offenders into prison, we have learned more about alternative sanctions to incarceration that are effective for addressing some of the risk factors for recidivism or early in criminal involvement. Common elements in alternative sanctions for women include specific attention to experiences of childhood and adult victimization, a trauma-informed framework, and a host of wrap-around services providing an array of resources (Ashley, Marsden, & Brady, 2003). Some states have attempted to drive down their prison admissions by employing a variety of graduated sanctions while individuals are on probation (Almt, 2015). Others use performance-based incentives and diversion following arraignment to maintain individuals within their counties with intensive supervision.

Secondary prevention aims to ensure that those currently in prison do not suffer permanent incapacitation or the collateral consequences described earlier (Drucker, 2013). As a possible realignment of priorities related to decreasing admissions, social workers could work with state and federal systems to ensure that incarcerated women are treated humanely, that they get needed medical, mental health, and drug treatment services, and realistic job training to improve their economic prospects. The U.S. Secretary of Education and the Attorney General recently announced a 5-year pilot program to enable some prisoners to use Pell Grants to enroll in college courses due to the strong empirical evidence that participation in college courses during incarceration produced positive outcomes, including lower recidivism and increased job prospects after release (Davis, Bozick, Steele, Saunders, & Miles, 2013).

Current and future sentencing guideline reductions should be retroactively applied. Every state should develop early release programs for good behavior and negative drug tests, as well as for the terminally ill. Reentry services should be initiated soon after arrival in prison and should also include a coordinated process with family members to support the reentry process. The final task that Drucker (2013) refers to as tertiary prevention applies to the millions of people who have spent a large portion of their adult lives in prison. This includes assessing individuals for trauma and providing the significant assistance that women need with securing safe housing, income support, employment, and rebuilding family relationships.

Restorative Justice

An emerging (and at the same time, ancient) paradigm in reforms and alternatives to incarceration is that of restorative justice grounded in indigenous people’s principals of addressing harms resulting from individual or collective behaviors. Restorative justice assumes that crime damages the perpetrator(s), the victim(s), and the community (Pranis & Stuart, 2011) and includes responses that promote repair, reconciliation, and reassurance. Restorative justice approaches have been operationalized within the United States most often addressing delinquency or conflict within schools with youth rather than in the adult system and have demonstrated evidence of success (Boyes-Watson, 2008). Gumz (2004) suggests that restorative justice is a useful method for social workers working in corrections and provides examples of successful implementation in programs in the United Kingdom. Latimer, Dowden, and Muise (2005) produced a meta-analysis of 22 studies of 35 distinct programs using restorative justice with adults in Canada and found a high degree of offender and victim satisfaction, a high rate of compliance with restitution orders, and sizable reductions in recidivism (when compared to individuals in nonrestorative justice programs). The studies in the meta-analysis were limited by the fewer samples of women in the restorative justice programs and a self-selection bias due to the lack of randomization. The authors make suggestions for reducing bias and argue for continuing investigation of these promising practices.

Conclusion

The mass incarceration of women is fueled by a punishment-driven philosophy that ignores the impoverishment and violent victimization of marginalized women. The typical decontextualized portrayal of women’s crime as resulting from individual deficits degenders women’s crime, ignoring the effects of abusive intimate relationships, poverty, reproductive injustice, and the intersections of race, class, and gender discrimination (Crenshaw, 2012; Sered & Norton-Hawk, 2014). We urge the social work profession to fashion a feminist and anti-oppressive response to the mass incarceration of women, calling for decarceration, community alternatives, and a public health approach to the collateral consequences of the Prison Nation. We also suggest the analysis of the interconnectedness of individual identities and structural oppressions in the lives of criminalized women through the lens of intersectionality, using cross-disciplinary and varied viewpoints (Mehrotra, 2010).

Durable change to the mechanisms of the Prison Nation and its resulting mass incarceration requires that we address the early criminalization of girls and women by rebuilding the safety net of economic supports that can provide quality education, fair wages employment, and the structural supports for health and well-being. In addition, we must advocate for the retooling of sentencing policies in response to women’s criminalized behaviors to incorporate treatment and supports for recovery and for the expansion of in-prison programs available to currently jailed and incarcerated women. Finally, we argue for the creation of realistic pathways to citizenship after release from prison. Feminist social work practice requires that we address the outcomes of institutional sexism, racism, and class injustice in the lives of marginalized women who are impacted by the Prison Nation.