Gender-responsive practice aims to meet the multiple and interrelating needs of women to prevent their unnecessary criminalisation and imprisonment, assist them into leading non-
69 criminal lifestyles and consequently, reduce the female prison
population (Corston, 2007; MOJ, 2008a, 2009). While the Corston Report (2007) ‘marked a bold endorsement of a gender-responsive approach to female prisoners’, as outlined later in this chapter, it was preceded by feminist and penal reformers campaigns as well as policy developments across the globe (Carlton and Segrave, 2013: 36).
The rationale for the utilisation of gender-responsive practice with female offenders is informed by feminist engagement with
alternative justice (Daly and Stubbs, 2006). Two theories inform the development of gendered justice for women - feminist pathways theory and relational/cultural theory. Feminist pathways theory explains girls and women’s involvement with the formal justice system due to their experiences of trauma and/or histories of victimisation (Belknap and Holsinger, 2006). This theory suggests a link between ‘early victimisation or trauma and justice involvement’ (Walker et al, 2015: 746). Cultural theory ‘listens to the voices’ of women (Bloom et al, 2003: 118), based on Gilligan’s (1982) concept of ‘moral reasoning’ (cited in Daly and Stubbs, 2006: 10). Gilligan (1982) states that women and girls moral reasoning is ‘guided by an ethic of care centred on moral concepts of responsibility and relationship’, emphasising the need to ‘respect and honour “women’s ways of knowing”’ (cited in Daly and Stubbs, 2006: 10). Within this theory, Heidensohn (1986) argues for an approach that values ‘caring and personal relations and is centred on responsibility and co-operation’ (cited in Daly and Stubbs, 2006: 10). Directly informed by the ways that women ‘develop their identity and relationships with others’ (Daly and Stubbs, 2006: 10), there are concerns that this theory would not result in the automatic addition of women’s voices and experiences to the criminal justice realm. While both theories have their limitations, they began to inform a
70 gender-responsive approach to treat girls and women who have
offended.
Gender-responsivity was first officially developed in the US in the 1990s to address the ‘realities of women’s lives’ via a social justice framework (Bloom, 1999: 22). One of the very first proponents of a gender-responsive strategy claimed that women often struggled to survive ‘outside legitimate enterprises’ resulting in them being drawn into the criminal justice system (Bloom, 1999: 22-3).
Women’s complex needs were not being acknowledged by gender- neutral assessment in traditional ‘risk, need, responsivity’ (RNR) models of offending behaviour programmes (Radcliffe and Hunter, 2016: 977). The RNR model or ‘what works’, previously adopted by the Probation Service in England and Wales failed to account for the differences in the characteristics of women who offend and was not responsive to their gender-specific needs as women (Ibid: 977). Gender-responsive services in the US were initially designed as preventative and early intervention techniques to reduce the
unnecessary criminalisation of women(Bloom, 1999, Lawston, 2013; Shaylor, 2009).
Despite a number of stand-alone projects by Heidensohn (1985), Harris (1987), Gilligan (1987) and Daly (1989) calling for the criminal justice system to adopt the ‘care/response model of reasoning’ (Harris, 1987: 32) with an emphasis on achieving social justice for women, it took another seven years for England and Wales to take the first tentative steps towards official gender informed practice under New Labour government proposals (Kendall, 2013). New Labour’s implementation of the ‘Accredited Cognitive Behavioural Programmes’ as a key feature of Probation Service practice
characterized offending as a result of faulty thinking (Mythen et al, 2013). A narrow focus was placed upon ‘individualistic forms of problem solving’ with little consideration of ‘other forms of
71 domination in women’s private and public lives’ (Bumiller, 2008: xiv).
This reflected the problematic alliance often forged between the state and reform movements under neoliberalism. New Labour ‘rejected the social causes of crime’ and instead attributed poverty, inequality, social exclusion and marginalisation to individual
personal failings and exclusion from paid work (Kemshall, 2002: 41). While a key manifesto aim at the start of their term in government was claiming to acknowledge and address wider social factors in determining criminal behaviour, attention remained focused upon individual factors associated with some forms of behaviour and increased emphasis was placed on risk and public protection (Kemshall, 2002; Bell, 2011, 2014). Neoliberal modes of practice were thus retained.
Despite the increasingly neoliberal political climate, in 1998, the Women’s Policy Group was established at Prison Service
Headquarters to develop expertise on gender issues (Kendall, 2013). This represented the first official provision to consider the specific issues facing women prisoners and women’s prisons (Kendall, 2013). Up until this point, policy affecting women had been dealt with together with policy affecting young offenders (Ibid).
Two years after the Women’s Policy Group was established, the Home Office produced the consultation document ‘The Government Strategy for Women Offenders’ (Home Office, 2000) and published its outcomes in the follow up paper ‘The Governments Strategy for Women Offenders: Consultation Report’ (Home Office, 2001). A key feature of both publications was for all criminal justice services to address gender differences for the first time to reduce women’s involvement in crime and subsequently divert them from prison (Hedderman, 2011). The Wedderburn Report, Justice for Women:
The Need for Reform (2000) published by the PRT following a two-
72 supervision, rehabilitation and support centres’ should be set up in
recognition of a cross government approach to rehabilitating women in the community (Carlen and Worrall, 2004). These
recommendations were designed to give women better access to a range of community agencies under one roof, via multi-agency working (Ibid). This was considered imperative because women’s broader lives including their social, personal and economic experiences inform their everyday lives, not just their offending behaviour (Cain, 1990).
The Social Exclusion Unit Report (SEU) (2002) further advanced conclusions drawn in the Wedderburn Report, recognising that women subject to prison sentences are amongst the most socially deprived, disadvantaged and marginalised in society (Hedderman, 2011). It acknowledged that female offenders’ needs were
frequently greater than men’s, women’s rates of imprisonment were increasing more rapidly than men’s and that women’s needs were being persistently overlooked in a criminal justice system designed for men (Social Exclusion Unit, 2002).
The SEU Report (2002) identified nine key factors specific to reducing women’s re-offending which are central to gender- responsive service delivery in WCs in England and Wales. They include education and training, employment, drugs and alcohol, mental and physical health, attitudes and self-control,
institutionalisation and life skills, housing, benefits and debt and families. The same year however, Hudson (2002) identified three key and interrelated issues central to policy and practice proposals for girls. While this project is concerned with women, ‘problematizing gender relations’ has been central in the development of gender- responsive practice in the present day for girls and women (Hudson, 2002: 304). The three themes included: empowerment and
73 giving girls the space to talk about and act upon the issues they feel
most effects their lives (Ibid). An inherent tension identified by Hudson (2002: 305) however, is that state welfare agencies are ‘often constrained by their statutory roles’ which can reduce the ‘sense of safety and confidentiality’ for girls and women thus undermining gender-responsive practice attempts.
In light of this, two years later, the Women’s Offending Reduction Programme (WORP), considered a progressive response to the SEU Report, stressed that the intention of gendered justice was ‘not to give women offenders’ preferential treatment but to achieve equality of treatment and access to provision’ (Home Office, 2004: 5) within existing systems and approaches (Hedderman, 2010). To be effective in reducing re-offending, gender-responsive practice aimed to consider the ‘distinctive features of women’s lives and needs’ as being interrelated, multiple and complex (Gelsthorpe et al, 2007 cited in O’Neill, 2011: 94).
Gender-responsive programmes were designed to integrate three key features (Bloom, 1999). Firstly, the environment should be free from physical, emotional and sexual harassment and spoken and unspoken rules of conduct provide appropriate boundaries. The second feature was connection – exchanges among female staff and service users should feel mutual rather than one way and
authoritarian. The third was empowerment, denoting that the programme should model how a woman can use power with and for others, rather than using power over others or being powerless (Bloom, 1999). These three levels of intervention included cognitive, affective and behavioural approaches. Cognitive approaches involve education to help ‘correct the misperceptions of women and girls and teach them to think critically when making decisions’ (Bloom, 1999: 24). At the affective level, women must ‘learn to express their feelings appropriately and contain them in healthy ways’ whilst the
74 behavioural component involves changes in substance abuse (Ibid:
24). Assessment was considered a vital component in gender- specific community programmes, with an emphasis on matching services and programme interventions to women’s individual, specific needs (Bloom, 1999: 24). Interventions, however, still needed to be ‘more informal, less structured and more focused upon issues other than offending behaviour’ (Barry and McIvor, 2010: 28). Women need to be ‘empowered to engage in social and personal change’ (Gelsthorpe, 2013:15). As explored later in this chapter, interventions that narrowly focus upon risk of recidivism and criminogenic need often fail to identify women’s practical and emotional support needs that were outlined in the cultural theory of gendered justice as crucial in achieving social justice for women.