The Gendered Stigma-Vulnerability Nexus and Women Who Use Drugs Such as Spice in Prison. A Feminist Critical Realist Discourse Analysis

Abstract

This paper explores the intersection of discourses around gender, stigma and vulnerability in the context of Spice use in English women’s prisons. Using Feminist Critical Realist Discourse Analysis, the study analyzes 15 semi-structured interviews. Two themes of gendered stigma-vulnerability are explored. First, embodied and social othering and second, gender norm non-conformity. The findings highlight how vulnerability and stigma are deeply entwined with gendered expectations and power dynamics in institutional settings. While criminalized women and drug users may share such experiences, the paper highlights the distinct nexus of gendered stigma-vulnerability discourses increasing marginalization for women who use Spice in prison.

Keywords

social constructions of female Deviance vulnerability and stigma critical realist discourse analysis Spice and other (new) psychoactive substances care and control of criminalized women

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Alexandrescu

(2020). Streets of the ‘spice zombies’: Dependence and poverty stigma in times of austerity. Crime, Media, Culture, 16(1), 97–113. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741659019835274

Alexandrescu

Spicer

(2023). The stigma-vulnerability nexus and the framing of drug problems. Drugs: Education, Prevention & Policy, 30(1), 6–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687637.2022.2049214

Barr

Ú.

(2019). Desisting sisters: Gender, power and desistance in the criminal. In Justice system. Palgrave Macmillan.

BBC . (2016). BBC exclusive: A look inside Wandsworth prison. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-36327325

Belknap

(2010). ‘Offending women’: A double entendre. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 100(3), 1061–1098.

Bilgrei

O. R.

(2016). From ‘herbal highs’ to the ‘heroin of cannabis’: Exploring the evolving discourse on synthetic cannabinoid use in a Norwegian Internet drug forum. International Journal of Drug Policy, 29, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2016.01.011

Blackman

Bradley

(2017). From niche to stigma—headshops to prison: Exploring the rise and fall of synthetic cannabinoid use among young adults. International Journal of Drug Policy, 40, 70–77. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2016.10.015

Bloom

Owen

Covington

Raeder

(2005). Gender-responsive strategies. In Research, practice and guiding principles for women offenders. https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/gender-responsive-strategies-research-practice-and-guiding

Bosworth

(1999). Engendering resistance: Agency and power in women’s prisons. Routledge.

10.

Bowles

J. M.

Copulsky

E. C.

Reed

M. K.

(2024). Media framing xylazine as a “zombie drug” is amplifying stigma onto people who use drugs. International Journal of Drug Policy, 125(104338), Article 104338. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2024.104338

11.

Boyd

Lavalley

Czechaczek

Mayer

Kerr

Maher

McNeil

(2020). “Bed Bugs and Beyond”: An ethnographic analysis of North America’s first women-only supervised drug consumption site. International Journal of Drug Policy, 78(102733), Article 102733. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2020.102733

12.

Brogaard

B. O.

(1999). Mead’s temporal realism. Transactions of the Charles S Peirce Society, 35(3), 563–593. https://about.jstor.org/terms

13.

Brown

Mitchell

Hunt

(2022). Post-implementation perspectives on smokefree prison policy: A qualitative study with staff and people in custody. The European Journal of Public Health, 32(1), 112–118. https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/ckab075

14.

Brown

(2011). ‘Vulnerability’: Handle with care. Ethics and Social Welfare, 5(3), 313–321. https://doi.org/10.1080/17496535.2011.597165

15.

Brown

(2017). The governance of vulnerability: Regulation, support and social divisions in action. International Journal of Sociology & Social Policy, 37(11–12), 667–682. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSSP-04-2016-0049

16.

Brown

Ecclestone

Emmel

(2017). The many faces of vulnerability. Social Policy and Society, 16(3), 497–510. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1474746416000610

17.

Brown

Wincup

(2020). Producing the vulnerable subject in English drug policy. International Journal of Drug Policy, 80, Article 102525. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2019.07.020

18.

Bujalski

Wieczorek

Ł.

Sierosławski

(2021). Risk perception and risk aversion among people who use New Psychoactive Substances. International Journal of Drug Policy, 97(103326), Article 103326. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2021.103326

19.

Burke

R. H.

(2009). An introduction to criminological theory (Third). Willan Publishing.

20.

Campos

Benoit

Dunlap

(2019). Risk management strategies of synthetic cannabis users. Drugs and Alcohol Today, 19(4), 270–281. https://doi.org/10.1108/DAT-04-2019-0012

21.

Carlen

(1985). In Carlen

(Ed.), Criminal women. Polity Press.

22.

Charman

(2020). Making sense of policing identities: The ‘deserving’ and the ‘undeserving’ in policing accounts of victimisation. Policing and Society, 30(1), 81–97. https://doi.org/10.1080/10439463.2019.1601721

23.

Clegg

(2016). Agency and ontology within intersectional analysis: A critical realist contribution. Journal of Critical Realism, 15(5), 494–510. https://doi.org/10.1080/14767430.2016.1210470

24.

Corston

(2007). The corston report: A review of women with particular vulnerabilities in the criminal justice system.

25.

Covington

S. S.

(1998). Women in prison: Approaches in the treatment of our most invisible population. Women & Therapy, 21(1), 141–155. https://doi.org/10.1300/J015v21n01_03

26.

Covington

S. S.

(2008). Women and addiction: A trauma-informed approach. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, (Suppl 5), 377–385. https://doi.org/10.1080/02791072.2008.10400665

27.

Craft

Austin

Tooth

Glover

Garrett

Blagbrough

I. S.

Sunderland

Pudney

C. R.

Freeman

T. P.

(2023). Synthetic cannabinoid use in an adult male prison in the UK. International Journal of Drug Policy, 122, Article 104219. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2023.104219

28.

Crewe

Hulley

Wright

(2017). The gendered pains of life imprisonment. British Journal of Criminology, 57(6), 1359–1378. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azw088

29.

Crewe

Schliehe

Przybylska

D. A.

(2023). It causes a lot of problems’: Relational ambiguities and dynamics between prisoners and staff in a women’s prison. European Journal of Criminology, 20(3), 925–946. https://doi.org/10.1177/14773708221140870

30.

Davis

D. S.

(1984). Good people doing dirty work: A study of social isolation. Symbolic Interaction, 7(2), 233–247. https://doi.org/10.1525/si.1984.7.2.233

31.

Duke

(2020). Producing the ‘problem’ of new psychoactive substances (NPS) in English prisons. International Journal of Drug Policy, 80(102479), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2019.05.022

32.

Duke

Gleeson

MacGregor

Thom

(2023). The risk matrix: Drug-related deaths in prisons in England and Wales, 2015–2020. Journal of Community Psychology, 52(8), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.22989

33.

Duke

Kolind

(2020). Framing and reframing drug ‘problems’ in prison spaces and populations. In MacGregor

Thom

(Eds.), Risk and substance use : Framing dangerous people and dangerous places (pp. 161–182). Routledge.

34.

Du Rose

(2015). The governance of female drug users. Women’s experiences of drug policy. In The governance of female drug users. Women’s experiences of drug policy. Policy Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1t89h83.14

35.

Esteban-Gonzalo

P. S. Y.

Aparicio-García

M. E.

Esteban-Gonzalo

(2020). Understanding the meaning of conformity to feminine norms in lifestyle habits and health: A cluster analysis. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(4), Article 1370. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17041370

36.

Fazel

Yoon

I. A.

Hayes

A. J.

(2017). Substance use disorders in prisoners: An updated systematic review and meta-regression analysis in recently incarcerated men and women. Addiction, 112(10), 1725–1739. https://doi.org/10.1111/add.13877

37.

Fineman

M. A.

(2008). The vulnerable subject: Anchoring equality in the human condition. Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, 20(1), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429287572-16

38.

Flick

(2004). Triangulation in qualitative. In Flick

von Kardoff

Steinke

(Eds.), A companion to qualitative research (pp. 178–183). Sage Publications.

39.

Foucault

(1982). The subject and power. Critical Inquiry, 8(4), 777–795. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110815764.387

40.

Fraser

(2017). The future of ‘addiction’: Critique and composition. International Journal of Drug Policy, 44(Jun), 130–134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2017.05.034

41.

Fraser

Pienaar

Dilkes-Frayne

Moore

Kokanovic

Treloar

Dunlop

(2017). Addiction stigma and the biopolitics of liberal modernity: A qualitative analysis. International Journal of Drug Policy, 44, 192–201. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2017.02.005

42.

Garland

(1997). ‘Governmentality’ and the problem of crime: Foucault, criminology, sociology. Theoretical Criminology, 1(2), 173–214. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480697001002002

43.

Garland

(2019). Punishment and welfare revisited. Punishment & Society, 21(3), 267–274. https://doi.org/10.1177/1462474518771317

44.

Garland

(2021). What’s wrong with penal populism? Politics, the public, and criminological expertise. Asian Journal of Criminology, 16(3), 257–277. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11417-021-09354-3

45.

Gorga

(2017). “Kinda like a man and a woman thing”: The construction and reification of gender hegemony in a women’s prison. Social Currents, 4(5), 413–428. https://doi.org/10.1177/2329496516686617

46.

Grace

(2017). Effective interventions for drug using women offenders: A narrative literature review. Journal of Substance Use, 22(6), 664–671. https://doi.org/10.1080/14659891.2017.1278624

47.

Grace

Lloyd

Perry

(2020). The spice trail: Transitions in synthetic cannabis receptor agonists (SCRAs) use in English prisons and on release. Drugs: Education, Prevention & Policy, 27(4), 271–281. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687637.2019.1684878

48.

Gray

Ralphs

Williams

(2021). The use of synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists (SCRAs) within the homeless population: Motivations, harms and the implications for developing an appropriate response. Addiction Research and Theory, 29(1), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/16066359.2020.1730820

49.

Hannah-Moffat

(2000). Prisons that empower: Neo-liberal governance in Canadian women’s prisons. British Journal of Criminology, 40(3), 510–531. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/40.3.510

50.

Hannah-Moffat

(2010). Sacrosanct or flawed: Risk, accountability and gender- responsive penal politics. Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 22(2), 193–215. https://doi.org/10.1080/10345329.2010.12035882

51.

Henriksen

A. K.

(2017). Confined to care: Girls’ gendered vulnerabilities in secure institutions. Gender & Society, 31(5), 677–698. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243217726968

52.

Henriksen

A. K.

(2018). Vulnerable girls and dangerous boys: Gendered practices of discipline in secure care. Young, 26(5), 427–443. https://doi.org/10.1177/1103308817737194

53.

HMCIP . (2015). Her Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons or England and Wales annual report 2014-15. https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprisons/inspections/

54.

HMCIP . (2016). Her Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons. Annual report for England and Wales. 2015-16. https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprisons/inspections/

55.

HMCIP . (2017). HM chief inspector of prisons for England and Wales annual report 2016-17. https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprisons/inspections/

56.

HMIP . (2022). Focus on women’ s prisons. A briefing paper from HM Inspectorate of Prisons (Issue February). https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprisons/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2022/02/Womens-briefing-paper.pdf

57.

Hutton

(2022). The co-production of shifting intoxications: synthetic cannabinoids, stigma, risk and harm. Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy, 29(4), 415–425. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687637.2022.2042486

58.

Jewkes

Jordan

Wright

Bendelow

(2019). Designing ‘healthy’ prisons for women: Incorporating trauma-informed care and practice (TICP) into prison planning and design. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 16(20), Article 3818. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16203818

59.

Kellie

D. J.

Blake

K. R.

Brooks

R. C.

(2019). What drives female objectification? An investigation of appearance-based interpersonal perceptions and the objectification of women. PLoS One, 14(8), Article e0221388. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0221388

60.

Kinman

Clements

A. J.

(2021). New psychoactive substances, safety and mental health in prison officers. Occupational Medicine, 71(8), 346–350. https://doi.org/10.1093/occmed/kqab113

61.

Kivle

B. M. T.

Espedal

(2022). Identifying values through discourse analysis. In Espedal

Jelstad Løvaas

Sirris

Wæraas

(Eds.), Researching values. Methodological approaches for understanding values work in organisations and leadership (pp. 171–187). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90769-3_10

62.

Kolind

Duke

(2016). Drugs in prisons: Exploring use, control, treatment and policy. Drugs: Education, Prevention & Policy, 23(2), 89–92. https://doi.org/10.3109/09687637.2016.1153604

63.

Layder

(2013). Doing excellent small-scale research. Sage Publications.

64.

Leese

Bell

(2021). ‘I seriously didn’t want to walk through them gates, it was that bad’: New psychoactive substance use and prison officer well-being. Prison Service Journal, 256(September), 15–22.

65.

Liamputtong

(2009). Qualitative research methods (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press.

66.

Lloyd

(1995). Doubly deviant, doubly damned. Penguin Books.

67.

Lloyd

(2013). The stigmatization of problem drug users: A narrative literature review. Drugs: Education, Prevention & Policy, 20(2), 85–95. https://doi.org/10.3109/09687637.2012.743506

68.

Macleod

Durrheim

(2002). Foucauldian feminism: The implications of governmentality. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 32(1), 41–60. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5914.00175

69.

Marandure

B. N.

Mhizha

Wilson

(2023). “Spice was made, by the devil himself”: A thematic analysis of the experience of an addiction to synthetic cannabinoids. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 55(3), 321–329–321–329. https://doi.org/10.1080/02791072.2022.2083534

70.

Martin

F. S.

Aston

(2014). A “special population” with “unique treatment needs”: Dominant representations of “women’s substance abuse” and their effects. Contemporary Drug Problems, 41(3), 335–360. https://doi.org/10.1177/009145091404100304

71.

Mason

Smith

Onwuegbusi

Roberts

(2022). New psychoactive substances and violence within a UK prison setting. Substance Use & Misuse, 57(14), 2146–2150. https://doi.org/10.1080/10826084.2022.2129999

72.

McKim

(2008). ‘Getting gut-level’: Punishment, gender, and therapeutic governance. Gender & Society, 22(3), 303–323. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243208317826

73.

McKim

(2014). Roxanne’s dress: Governing gender and marginality through addiction treatment. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 39(2), 433–458. https://doi.org/10.1086/673089

74.

Ministry of Justice . (2018). Female offender strategy (Issue June). https://www.gov.uk/government/publications

75.

Ministry of Justice . (2021). Prisons strategy white paper (Issue December). Ministry of Justice. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/prisons-strategy-white-paper

76.

Ministry of Justice . (2023). Female offender strategy Delivery plan 2022-25. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/female-offender-strategy-delivery-plan-2022-to-2025

77.

Ministry of Justice, & HMPPS . (2021). COVID-19: The national research committee’ s medium-term plan (updated). https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/her-majestys-prison-and-probation-service/about/research

78.

Moore

Fraser

Törrönen

Tinghög

M. E.

(2015). Sameness and difference: Metaphor and politics in the constitution of addiction, social exclusion and gender in Australian and Swedish drug policy. International Journal of Drug Policy, 26(4), 420–428. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2015.01.011

79.

Nichols

T. R.

Welborn

Gringle

M. R.

Lee

(2021). Social stigma and perinatal substance use services: Recognizing the power of the good mother ideal. Contemporary Drug Problems, 48(1), 19–37. https://doi.org/10.1177/0091450920969200

80.

Norman

Walker

McKirdy

McDonald

Fletcher

Antonides

L. H.

Sutcliffe

O. B.

Nic Daéid

McKenzie

(2020). Detection and quantitation of synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists in infused papers from prisons in a constantly evolving illicit market. Drug Testing and Analysis, 12(4), 538–554. https://doi.org/10.1002/dta.2767

81.

Nussbaum

M. C.

(2004). Hiding from humanity: Disgust, shame, and the law. Princeton University Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7sf7k

82.

Peacock

Bruno

Gisev

Degenhardt

Hall

Sedefov

White

Thomas

K. V.

Farrell

Griffiths

(2019). New psychoactive substances: Challenges for drug surveillance, control, and public health responses. The Lancet, 394(Issue 10209), 1668–1684. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(19)32231-7

83.

Perrin

Bertrand

Langlois

(2021). Avoiding the stigma. A qualitative study of socially included women’s experiences of drug use and dealing, health services and the police in France. International Journal of Drug Policy, 87(102850), Article 102850.

84.

Pinkham

Stoicescu

Myers

(2012). Developing effective health interventions for women who inject drugs: Key areas and recommendations for program development and policy. Advances in Preventive Medicine, 2012(269123), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1155/2012/269123

85.

Pollack

(2005). Taming the shrew: Regulating prisoners through women-centred mental health programming. Critical Criminology, 13(1), 71–87. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-004-6168-5

86.

Pollack

(2009). “you can’t have it both ways”: Punishment and treatment of imprisoned women. Journal of Progressive Human Services, 20(20(2)), 112–128. https://doi.org/10.1080/10428230903306344

87.

Pratt

(2007). Penal populism. Routledge.

88.

Ralphs

Gray

(2018). New psychoactive substances: New service provider challenges. Drugs: Education, Prevention & Policy, 25(4), 301–312. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687637.2017.1417352

89.

Ralphs

Williams

Askew

Norton

(2017). Adding Spice to the Porridge: The development of a synthetic cannabinoid market in an English prison. International Journal of Drug Policy, 40, 57–69. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2016.10.003

90.

Robinson

O. C.

(2014). Sampling in interview-based qualitative research: A theoretical and practical guide. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 11(1), 25–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/14780887.2013.801543

91.

Rose

(2000). Government and control. British Journal of Criminology, 40(2), 321–339. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/40.2.321

92.

Rowe

(2011). Narratives of self and identity in women’s prisons: Stigma and the struggle for self-definition in penal regimes. Punishment & Society, 13(5), 571–591. https://doi.org/10.1177/1462474511422151

93.

Rowe

(2016). Tactics’, agency and power in women’s prisons. British Journal of Criminology, 56(2), 332–349.

94.

Rudolfsson

Sinani

(2021). “Some things stick”: Secondary traumatization among police officers and medical personnel meeting with raped women. Traumatology, 28(4), 431–440. https://doi.org/10.1037/trm0000354

95.

Rutter

Barr

(2021). Being a ‘good woman’: Stigma, relationships and desistance. Probation Journal, 68(2), 166–185. https://doi.org/10.1177/02645505211010336

96.

Schemenauer

(2012). Victims and vamps, madonnas and whores: The construction of female drug couriers and the practices of the US security state. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 14(1), 83–102. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616742.2011.631277

97.

Shirley-Beavan

Roig

Burke-Shyne

Daniels

Csak

(2020). Women and barriers to harm reduction services: A literature review and initial findings from a qualitative study in barcelona, Spain. Harm Reduction Journal, 17(1), Article 78. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12954-020-00429-5

98.

Sims-Schouten

Riley

(2019). Presenting critical realist discourse analysis as a tool for making sense of service users’ accounts of their mental health problems. Qualitative Health Research, 29(7), 1016–1028. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732318818824

99.

Sims Schouten

Riley

S. C. e.

Willig

(2007). Critical realism in discourse analysis: A presentation of a systematic method of analysis using women’s talk of motherhood, childcare and female employment as an example. Theory & Psychology, 17(1), 101–124. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959354307073153

100.

Stevens

(2020). Critical realism and the ‘ontological politics of drug policy’. International Journal of Drug Policy, 84(102723), 197–206. https://doi.org/10.1002/cb.1444/abstract

101.

Stone

(2016). Desistance and identity repair: Redemption narratives as resistance to stigma. British Journal of Criminology, 56(5), 956–975. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azv081

102.

Taylor

Buchanan

Ayres

(2016). Prohibition, privilege and the drug apartheid: The failure of drug policy reform to address the underlying fallacies of drug prohibition. Criminology and Criminal Justice, 16(4), 452–469. https://doi.org/10.1177/1748895816633274

103.

Turnbull

Hannah-Moffat

(2009). Under these conditions. British Journal of Criminology, 49(4), 532–551. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azp015

104.

User Voice . (2016). Spice: The bird killer what prisoners think about the use of spice and other legal highs in prison. https://www.uservoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/User-Voice-Spice-The-Bird-Killer-Report-Low-Res.pdf

105.

Van Roeyen

Anderson

Vanderplasschen

Colman

Laenen

F. V.

(2017). Desistance in drug-using offenders: A narrative review. European Journal of Criminology, 14(5), 606–625. https://doi.org/10.1177/1477370816682980

106.

Wheatley

Stephens

Clarke

(2015). Violence, aggression and agitation — what part do new psychoactive substances play? Prison Service Journal. Special Edition: Reducing Prison Violence, 221(September), 36–41.

107.

White

N. J.

(2025). When you are emotionally connected to someone who uses spice it is very worrying’. Women’s secondary vulnerabilities associated with drugs in prison. Drugs: Education, Prevention & Policy, Advance Online Publication, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687637.2025.2477749

108.

Wincup

Stevens

(2021). Scapegoating and othering in drug policy: A special themed section. International Journal of Drug Policy, 87, Article 103093. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2020.103093