Negotiating Contradictions

Abstract

SUMMARY Front-line workers, advocates, researchers and correctional officials in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. have recognized the high proportion of imprisoned women who have experienced childhood sexual abuse and have called for the development of appropriate prison counseling services that take into account women's histories of trauma (Battle et al., 2003; Covington, 1998; Covington&Bloom, 2003; Scott, 2004; Task Force on Federally Sentenced Women, 1990; Van Wormer, 2001). Although researchers have pointed out the contradictions in providing treatment within an institution whose mandate is to punish (Girshick, 2003; Heney&Kristianen, 1998; Kendall, 1994; McCorkel, 2003; Scott, 2004; Marcus-Mendoza&Wright, 2004), very few mental health researchers, with the exception of those who point to the re-traumatizing nature of imprisonment on survivors of childhood abuse, incorporate this understanding of the prison environment into their recommendations of therapeutic approaches. In particular, little attention is paid to issues of power within the therapeutic relationship or the social control function of therapeutic services within the prison setting. In this paper we center the contradictions inherent in providing therapeutic services within an institution whose mandate is to punish and control. We follow this examination with a discussion of strategies for dealing with some of these power issues in order to minimize the potential for therapeutic services to replicate and reproduce dominant constructions of women prisoners as disordered and of being part of the correctional mandate of control, surveillance, and punishment.