Applying feminist criminology to social work criminal justice research: treating addiction, mental health, and victimization

Abstract

ABSTRACT While the Smart Decarceration movement was developed by social work academics to encourage research on reducing the U.S. criminal justice population, justice-involved women have thus far been largely excluded from this initiative. This paper offers a conceptual review of research on justice-involved women, paying particular attention to the field of feminist criminology. This review illustrates the unique challenges and experiences that are involved in the circumstances of women offenders; we point out both the relative dearth of much-needed research around justice-involved women and more importantly the tremendous opportunity for future study to help in the decarceration effort. This article ultimately argues that the Smart Decarceration movement will remain incomplete without the incorporation of feminist criminology research to simultaneously address the addiction, mental health, and victimizations histories common among justice-involved women.