Offending Women & Boys to
Offenders
In
the article: Boys to Offenders: Damaging
Masculinity and Traumatic Victimization, the research question explores how
boys and young men’s life stories coincide with their pathways towards crime.
The hypothesis suggests that incarcerated men have similar experiences and life
stories as women offenders, such as loss and abandonment, violent victimization,
and secondary victimization in the form of witnessing violence. The methodology
in the qualitative study used Semi-structured
interview protocols analyzing the narratives of the sample. The sample explored
were the lives of 25 adult incarcerated men in two medium security
prisons from March 2012 to February 2013. Other demographics about the sample
includes: one Latino, one Asian Pacific Islander, eight African American men
(three of which committed murders, two for drug sales, and a young male that
was in for violating parole), and 15 White men (four of which committed
murders, one incarcerated for abusing infant, five for burglary, one for
assaulting a police officer, and one for drug sales.)
In
the study, the dependent variable is the type of offense committed by the
incarcerated men. The independent variables studied were the risk factors that
reflected victimization such as the neighborhoods the men grew up, painful
memories, substance abuse, involvement in delinquency and gang affiliation, familial
and romantic relationships, and educational and work histories. The findings suggest
the men experienced early parental abandonment, early physical, sexual, and
emotional abuse by a parent, drug addiction and alcohol abuse. Some men said
they used drugs and alcohol as early as 10 or 11 and sold drugs at that age.
Some were introduced to sex by their fathers—even one father paying for oral
sex for his son. Many men were sexually abused in their childhood either by
their Father, Uncle, Mother, older babysitter, sister, local pastor, female
employee at a juvenile center, or older women that exchanged drugs for sex. Other
men witnessed father’s abusing their mothers. For instance, one man said when
he was 14, he fought his father when he physically abused his mother. One
father was seen murdering another man. Some men characterized their fathers as
promiscuous and so too they adopted that promiscuity—even one man having 19
children from different women, and another having 13 children. Similarly, the
men acted out the street lifestyle of their fathers or their role models that
done such as selling drugs or perpetrating violence. The men acted out their
own violence from past experiences, onto their wives or intimate partners. In
one example, a man became so enraged with his partner after she pulled a knife
on him, and he murdered her through drowning and then hid her naked body in a
potato sack. One man murdered his best friend when he found out him and his
partner were having an affair. Often the men covered up their emotions and
vulnerabilities as to elucidate their street credibility if they adopted a
lifestyle of violence in the neighborhoods.
The implications for the findings
suggest there is a need for legitimate pro-social friendships and support
because many of the men felt loneliness, isolation, or abandonment. Many men
had to grow up quickly to deal with the harsh realities of their childhood.
Thus, the men did not have a childhood at all. Additionally, there is a need to
stop socializing boys to act out toughness through violence, bullying, and other
controlling acts to perform masculinity. Because
the study focuses on the history of the men as far as family, friends, and
other personal experiences, the study utilizes a Humanistic perspective and
feminist theory to gain insight and understand the common childhood experiences
and how the men’s incarceration reflects the very real problems they faced.
Similarly, the article “Offending
Women”: A Double Entendre, the
research question asks about the causes of women’s criminal offending. The
research utilizes Feminist Criminology theory in summarizing and critiquing 19
articles of offending women over the last 100 years. The methodology of the
research was the collection of articles on offending women. The researcher
notes that little research has been done on this population which highlights
the lack of understanding the population. In the data collected, the researcher
finds that 16 of the articles were written by women (and the three most recent
written by men which tended to view offending women as immoral in a sexist
framework.) The articles were devoid of contextualizing factors of race, trauma
and victimization; and when race is mentioned, it is in a racist manner. But,
the researcher finds that the historical data had much to offer when describing
other common factors. The physical, psychological, and sociological risk
factors that influence offending men are similar to the variables in the
article on offending women. Likewise, the
dependent variable of women offenders is the type of offense committed; and
independent variables are the socio-economic adversity like the male offenders
such as educational and employment histories, and mental and physical health. Consequently, the demographics of the samples
examined suggest that the majority of women
in the 20th century were incarcerated for public drunkenness and
lewdness, particularly prostitution or any “immoral sex” act because the system
attempts to control women’s sexuality. This was related to the high incidences
of venereal diseases among the women.
Contrasting from men’s prisons,
women’s prisons looked like campuses while theirs appeared custodial. But
women’s reformatories/prisons were still awful conditions, and the prison
system justified the lack of resources towards them because there was a lower
prison population for women than incarcerated men who received more resources. Much
of the female offender population had eye dental problems because of lack of
resources (which would make it harder to attain employment.) Other findings of
the research reflect the hypothesis that many women prisoners, like
incarcerated men, exhibited poor mental and physical health, had very low
levels of education; and the majority were under the age of 30. Additionally,
the majority of the female prisoner population worked prior to incarceration;
and White European immigrants and African American women were
disproportionately incarcerated in the samples studied.
Unlike men depicted in the first
article, the Offending Women research
found that there are high incidences of epilepsy among women’s prison
population. To “help” women prisoners, the goal was often to train them to be
domestic workers, like a maid, housewife, a good mother. This is probably not
the case for men’s prisons, where men are trained how to be a good housekeeper
or good husband and father. The
implications of the findings first suggest that further researcher is needed to
understand the offending women’s population. Second, once risk factors and
common experiences are addressed, prevention is necessary to be implemented.
Although incarceration may not be prevented unless sexist, classist, and racist
frameworks are dismantled and certain types of offenses do not lead to
incarceration—until then imprisonment can be prevented if our societies goals
are to provide basic needs to all people such as education, safe housing, mental
health and physical health care. Lastly, there is a need to create a culture
that does not punish and instead is a culture of love that also encourages
healthy emotional attachment to family, friends, and form pro-social
relationships.
No comments:
Post a Comment