NCJ Number
89920
Date Published
1983
Length
34 pages
Annotation
Interviews with 16 female inmates revealed that their offenses and backgrounds are not significantly different from those of female inmates prior to the influence of the women's liberation movement.
Abstract
The 16 women who consented to be interviewed constituted 75 percent of the sentenced female felons held in the Oahu Community Correctional Center (Hawaii). The interviews were designed to explore the details of the socioeconomic backgrounds and criminal careers of the subjects. Like the typical women inmate in previous years, the contemporary female inmate is young, poor, a member of a minority group, a high school dropout, unmarried, and the mother of two or more children for whom she is the sole support. The subjects reported having been the victims of an astonishing amount of severe child abuse. Affection and physical security were generally lacking in their childhoods. The pattern that emerged for most of the subjects was that of young girls faced with violence or sexual abuse at home who became criminalized by their efforts to escape from the abuse (running away that led to prostitution and other occasions for contact with the criminal justice system). For many, the transition to crime was made easier by dependence on drugs. Lack of formal education and satisfying employment options also contributed to the use of deviant behavior to survive. Most of the women had been imprisoned for nonviolent property offenses. There was no indication that the criminal careers of these women had emerged from any commitment to or conditioning by the influences of the women's liberation movement. Thirty notes are provided.