Improving Correctional Strategies for Women at the Margins: Recommendations for an Intersectionally-Responsive Approach

ABSTRACT

Since the early 1990s, an abundance of research and scholarship has been devoted toward developing “what works” in correctional assessment and rehabilitative treatment, including gender-responsive strategies for women. However, far less is known regarding the effects of such correctional strategies on women with intersectional identities (e.g., racially diverse, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender). Such considerations are important as marginalized women are disproportionately over-represented within the United States correctional population. This article seeks to advance correctional strategies for women through the application of an intersectional lens. First, a brief overview of gender-responsive correctional strategies and current limitations are provided. Next, intersectionality and intersectional criminology are summarized. Finally, recommendations for an intersectionally-responsive approach are presented to help improve correctional supervision and treatment for women at the margins.Note: An earlier version of this manuscript was awarded the American Society of Criminology Division on Women and Crime Graduate Student Paper Award. I would like to acknowledge and thank my doctoral advisory committee for their guidance on this topic area: Drs. Emily Salisbury, Emily Troshynski, and Gillian Pinchevsky. I would also like to thank Dr. Dana Radatz for her feedback and support. Finally, I would like to thank the reviewers for their insight and constructive feedback that helped strengthen this manuscript.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• rehabilitation
• theory
• treatment

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Potter (2015) suggested the preferred term for women who identify as Black or African American is “women of Color.” Crenshaw (1991) used the same term in her seminal piece.

2. LGBTQIA+ is used to describe persons who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning or queer, intersex, asexual, and any other identity people with “nonmainstream” sexual orientation or gender identity.

3. see Cain (1986); Gelsthorpe and Morris (1988) for the origination of the term.

4. This terminology was developed through dialogues facilitated in workshops at the FreeHer 2018 Conference in Tulsa, Oklahoma (Salisbury, Moore, & Bain, 2018; Sergejev & Mati, 2018).

5. Such concerns were brought up through an interactive workshop at the 2018 FreeHer Conference in Tulsa, OK (Boppre, 2018b).

6. To date, only one study has examined impact of cultural sensitivity on treatment outcomes, but used a small sample of male correctional clients (Licata, 2016).

7. The issues of mandated cultural competency training and whether such training covers intersectionality were discussed with practitioners in the mental health/corrections field through workshops at the 2017 Adult and Juvenile Female Offenders Conference in Santa Ana, CA (Boppre, Salisbury, & Roller, 2017) and the 2018 FreeHer Conference in Tulsa, OK (Boppre, 2018b).

8. Research in this area focused on male correctional clients.