Intersections of Trauma, Gender, and Incarceration: Addressing Inmate Service Needs Holistically

With the rate of women’s incarceration significantly outpacing that of men’s, combined with the fact that the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, there is an urgent need to delineate incarcerated women’s pathways to crime, with a focus on the role of gender and trauma, in order to more clearly design appropriate services to meet incarcerated women’s needs. Decades of research have resulted in policies and practices designed to address the needs of incarcerated men, but we cannot simply apply these to women as a one-size-fits-all strategy. My presentation reports findings of my mixed-method research conducted from 2008 to 2010 with women incarcerated in a large, county jail in North Carolina. Thirty life-history interviews, nine focus groups, and 60 questionnaires reveal the centrality of trauma, particularly in the form of interpersonal violence, in incarcerated women’s lives. In the absence of positive resources (e.g., counseling, substance abuse treatment), women’s attempts to cope with trauma often increase their risks for incarceration as well as further trauma. In addition to providing trauma-based treatment, decreasing women’s recidivism requires macro-level examinations of policies and practices that marginalize women economically and socially