Trauma and Women in Prison
Between 1980 to 2017, the number of women incarcerated in the US increased 750 percent
Women serving prison sentences suffer serious trauma both before and during incarceration, and improved awareness and better services in the prison systems are urgently needed, according to a 2020 study by the Urban Institute. In 2019, there were more than 231,000 women and girls held in prisons and jails across the country, the majority of those imprisoned for non-violent offenses.
According to the research conducted in the study, correctional facilities have not changed their approaches in addressing growing concerns around victimization. Incarcerated women have histories of victimization and trauma at much higher rates than incarcerated men, including trauma exposure, interpersonal trauma, victimization, and post traumatic stress disorder. The lifetime prevalence of PTSD among a sample of incarcerated women was 53 percent, compared with a prevalence of 10 percent in the general population.
Additionally, women are more likely than men to have experienced violence and/or sexual victimization before incarceration, and the sexual violence continues after women enter the prison systems. Research cited in the study revealed that while women accounted for only 7 percent of the incarcerated population in the United States between 2009 and 2011, they represented 22 percent of the victims of assault perpetrated by other incarcerated people, and 33 percent of the assaults perpetrated by facility staff and in state and federal prisons.
Most prisons use a vague definition of "emotional support" in the form of mental health treatment for past trauma and in-custody victimization. But there are severe limits to these offerings. Many facilities cannot meet the demand for trauma-informed treatment programming due to limited resources. The study identified two significant challenges to facilities being more responsive to trauma; attitudes undermining of the validity of incarcerated women’s personhood and victimization experiences and staff violence against women prisoners.
You can read and download the full report from the Urban Institute.
