NCJ Number
191924
Journal
Women, Girls & Criminal Justice Volume: 2 Issue: 6 Dated: October/November 2001 Pages: 81-82,95,96
Date Published
2001
Length
4 pages
Annotation
This article reviews the effectiveness of programs in New York City and Portland, Oregon to treat women offenders receiving drug treatment in community and corrections-based programs.
Abstract
Project WORTH studied women offenders receiving drug treatment in community and corrections-based programs in New York City and Portland, Oregon. In this study, many women offenders adopted the corrections language of “violations” and “turned it around” to illuminate their own experiences and to understand key relationships in their lives. By listening to how women defined and discussed “violations,” the connections between experiences of abuse and harassment become clearer. In addition, drug treatment provided a unique opportunity for women to address a range of “violations:” both the ones they committed and the ones they experienced. In the criminal justice system, women offenders may be mandated into drug treatment after having committed “violations” of their parole or probation. However, in the entire ethnographic study, not a single woman mentioned that she had actively “violated” the conditions of her parole. Rather, women described having been violated by their parole/probation officer. At the same time that women described their parole/probation violations as a kind of victimization, they also detailed their own behavior as reasons for the violation. Exposure to the notions of trauma and abuse in the course of drug treatment gave many women offenders a new “take” on the concept of violations. Primarily, drug treatment programs offering a range of gender-specific services provided women offenders with the opportunity to examine their own experiences of sexual “violations.” While many of the drug treatment programs in the Project WORTH study provided services to address childhood sexual abuse, women offenders expanded their definitions of sexual violations to include adult experiences of sexual assault/rape, sexual and economic exploitation by sex work clients or “johns,” and sexual assault/rape by employers in the drug economy. In the context of their experiences in jail and prison, women offenders’ definitions of “violations” proliferated and expanded in scope, using not only the concept of physical and emotional boundaries, but human rights. The findings in this study suggest the emergence of a social foundation for a unique critique of corrections practices that favor a more respectful approach to drug recovery and abuse survival, to the more traditional, punishment-oriented approaches to drug treatment. In many cases, women offenders have been labeled as “violators” of various laws and legal conditions before they have been identified by service programs as victims and survivors of a range of social and sexual violations. Intervening in the cycle of violations committed by women offenders’ significant others remains particularly challenging. However, drug treatment programs are uniquely positioned to play an empowering role during and after a woman offender’s time in treatment. Aftercare services are especially crucial in providing support for women offenders in recovery attempting to manage new relationships with significant others and parole officers. Thus, drug treatment professionals can exert multi-directional leverage in the prevention of violations in the lives of women offenders in drug recovery. References