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Women Prisoners

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Maltreatment during childhood and adulthood will be greater among female than ... that her failure is due to her own inherent stupidity and disorganization. ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Women Prisoners


1
Women Prisoners Victimization
2
What is the relationship between maltreatment,
substance abuse, and criminality? Does the
relationship differ for males and females?
3
Hypotheses
  • Maltreatment during childhood and adulthood will
    be greater among female than male inmates
  • Childhood maltreatment will be more strongly
    related to adult depression for female inmates.
  • Depression will be more prevalent among females.

4
Hypotheses
  • Substance use (presumably as a means of
    self-medication) will be more highly associated
    with maltreatment for female than male inmates.
  • The severity of substance misuse and problems
    associated with misuse will be stronger
    predictors of female rates of criminal activity
    than male rates.

5
Why would we hypothesize that there will be
differences in womens and mens maltreatment and
their responses to it?
6
What have earlier studies shown?
7
Literature Review
  • Females experience more frequent and more serious
    victimization than males.
  • Women are more likely than men to react to sexual
    victimization with self-blame and depression.

8
Literature Review
  • Depression is far more common among women than
    men.
  • Abused females are more likely to respond to a
    depressed mood with thoughts that contribute to
    the perpetuation of the mood, whereas males
    engage in instrumental behaviors that distract
    them from depression.

9
Carol Gilligan writes
  • In early adolescence girls begin edging toward
    relinquishing what they know and what they have
    held fast to, as they come face to face with a
    social construction of reality that is at odds
    with their experience, so that some kind of
    dissociation becomes inevitable.

10
Carol Gilligan writes
  • Girls initiation or passage into adulthood in a
    world psychologically rooted and historically
    anchored in the experiences of powerful men marks
    the beginning of self-doubt and the dawning of
    the realization, no matter how fleeting, that
    womanhood will require a dissociative split
    between experience and what is generally taken to
    be reality.

11
What did our studies of women prisoners in Texas
show?
12
Studies of Women in Texas Prisons
  • Who are these women?
  • What is life like for these women behind
  • bars?

13
Similarities to Men Prisoners
  • 32 years old
  • Minority
  • Poor
  • Single Parent of 2 children
  • High School Dropout

14
Differences Between Male Female Inmates
  • Females experienced more abuse than males
  • Frequent physical, emotional, sexual abuse
  • Frequently felt unloved, unsafe and in danger

15
Female Prisoners in Texas
  • 1/2 reported childhood abuse
  • 3/4 experienced abuse as adults
  • 1/2 reported being violently attacked
  • 1/3 were sexually abused as adults
  • 1/2 had partners who had substance abuse or
    psychiatric problems

16
Did you know?
  • Women who were abused as children are more likely
    than men to be depressed as adults.
  • 1/2 of the women were substance dependent
  • Drug dependence more likely to lead to criminal
    behavior in women than men

17
Most problematic drug for women?
  • Crack cocaine

18
Crack in particular, offers the equivalent of a
born-again metamorphosis.
19
Instantaneously, the user is transformed from an
unemployed, depressed high school dropout,
despised by the world--and secretly convinced
that her failure is due to her own inherent
stupidity and disorganization.
20
  • There is a rush of heart-palpitating pleasure,
    followed by a jaw-gnashing crash and wide-eyed
    alertness that provides her life with concrete
    purpose.
  • Get more crack--fast!

21
The Story of the Women in our Study.
  • A poor girl
  • Victimized in childhood
  • Increasingly victimized in adulthood
  • Feels powerless and low
  • Suffers depression
  • Self-medicates to relieve her misery

22
Results.
  • Drug Dependence
  • Arrest
  • Incarceration

23
There are theories that help us to understand
this story.
24
Seligmans Learned Helplessness Theory
  • There is a relationship between powerlessness and
    depression.
  • People who come to expect that they have little
    if any control over important outcomes in their
    lives tend to develop symptoms of depression.

25
What experiences would lead to a sense of
helplessness in women?
  • Victimization and subtle ways women are made to
    feel less than.

26
Lenore Walkers Extension of Learned Helplessness
  • A stance of learned helplessness actually
    increases the likelihood of a woman being
    battered.
  • Battered woman syndrome and learned helplessness
    are linked to post-traumatic stress disorder.

27
  • Females are more likely than males to react to
    sexual victimization with self-blame and
    depression.

28
Carol Gilligans work on womens distinctive
voice suggests that
  • Womens response to maltreatment may be a
    function of their greater self-critical morality
    (it must be my fault).

29
Womens Cognitive Style
  • May be more maladaptive than mens.
  • Womens thinking makes them more vulnerable to
    depression.
  • Once depression sets in, womens response tends
    to perpetuate the mood.

30
Mens Cognitive Style
  • Mens instrumental behaviors distract them from
    it.
  • Mens more active responses to their - mood may
    be more adaptive than womens less active
    responses.

31
  • Women tend to turn their feelings inward against
    themselves in the form of anxiety and suicidal
    thoughts.
  • Depression and maltreatment increase womens
    vulnerability to substance abuse.

32
Disparity in Treatment of Men Women in Texas
  • Women received more disciplinary infractions than
    men!
  • Rules are enforced in womens prisons and ignored
    in mens!

33
Some surprising findings
  • 1322 women cited for violating written or posted
    rules compared with 9 men
  • 350 women cited for possession of contraband
    compared with 41 men
  • 43 instances of trafficking trading
  • (sharing shampoo in the shower, lighting
    someones cigarette)
  • They call is trafficking and trading, we call it
    caring and sharing.

34
  • They call it trafficking and trading, we call it
    caring and sharing.

35
How does it happen?
  • In a year women prisoners incurred an average of
    15 citations/men less than 3
  • Almost 1/3 of the women receive 21 or more,
    compared to only 2 of the men

36
How is it possible?
  • Female inmates received 85 of the most severe
    disciplinary punishment
  • solitary confinement,
  • loss of good conduct time
  • reduction in time-earning status

37
Biology is Destiny
  • In Texas prisons gender determines what
    constitutes a disciplinary infraction.

38
Intensive Surveillance of Females
  • An historical vestige
  • Reflects the belief that women should conform to
    gender-based stereotypes stressing obedience,
    dependence, and deference

39
  • The warden of the male prison stated that he
    effects an accommodation with male inmates, a
    tacit social contract of noninterference, in
    return for relative compliance with rules.
  • The women wardens of the womens prisons demand
    total compliance with every rule on the books and
    punish violations through formal mechanisms.

40
  • Women in prison are subject to an official system
    that carries the patriarchal pattern of social
    control to absurd lengths.

41
  • As night follows day, omnipresent surveillance
    elicits the behavior it is installed to control...
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