NCJ Number
211712
Journal
Corrections Today Magazine Volume: 67 Issue: 6 Dated: October 2005 Pages: 26-27,101
Date Published
October 2005
Length
3 pages
Annotation
This article explores women’s pathways to criminality and offers recommendations for women-centered programming in corrections.
Abstract
While researchers have called for a gender sensitive approach to corrections, it remains unclear how this approach should be put in practice. The authors note that, in comparison to male offenders, female offenders are on average assessed as having a greater number of needs areas and to have a higher prevalence of needs in the personal/emotional area, in marital and family relations, and in academic and vocational skills. The risk factors for women’s criminality are reviewed and generally center on cumulative social and emotional difficulties. The corrections industry should be studying how to best reduce the impact of these criminogenic factors for women. The authors focus on the recently developed “good lives model” (GLM) as a useful guide to developing women-centered correctional programming. The model stresses a self-validating approach to adaptive coping and decisionmaking. The main goal is to instill meaningful and sustainable motivation for change and to retain flexibility in the programming that allows for different modes of expression, such as storytelling and metaphor analysis. Endnotes