Gender-specific treatment

Abstract

Despite a roughly equal number of men and women in the general population, women consistently have lower rates of incarceration than their male peers. The difference is not trivial; there are 10 men incarcerated for each woman in the United States. The correctional system was confronted with issues specific to female inmates in part as a product of the War on Drugs from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. During this period, the number of women incarcerated rose 888%. The bulk of this rise was attributable to arrests for non-violent drug related charges. As the correctional system began to experience an influx of women, it became clear that they were different from their male peers. The differences included epidemiology of psychiatric disorders, intensity of health service utilization, social stressors, and patterns of offending. The logical question arose as to whether women needed a different treatment approach in the correctional system than men. The term ‘gender responsive programming’ emerged and represented the idea that women have specific needs distinct from male peers that could best be met with treatment designed for women. The purpose of this chapter is to describe, given the current knowledge base: the patterns of offending and arrests for women versus men; the socio-demographics of incarcerated women; the psychopathology exhibited by incarcerated women; and finally, how best to treat incarcerated women and implement this treatment within jails and prisons.