The male gender mostly dominates the corrections enterprise in America. This is because almost 93% of the convicted population constitute majorly male. Besides, most positions of power that ascertain the course of retribution in society are occupied by men. This includes the government, the legal profession, the judiciary positions, and the criminal justice administration positions. This depicts that most strategies and policies of corrections emerge from male perceptions of punishment and crime. However, in modern society, women's roles have undergone tremendous transition making the long-held ancient views about women to face several challenges within criminal justice and corrections. Besides, recently, women constitute the fastest-growing segment of the correctional population. Therefore, there is a need to identify various challenges and social world exhibited by women convicts when compared to their male counterparts. This will help to come up with programs that will help the convicts to adapt to the challenges and also develop the desired society's morals and standards. One of the challenges experienced in prisons is the issue of racial segregation and violence among inmates. Male inmates tend to separate themselves based on race and ethnic groups leading to racial discrimination. In contrast, women prisoners base their segregations on responses to a dispute over personal relationships, snitching, or theft (Welch, 2011). Exploitations and intimidations are also common in women's penitentiaries, but acts of violence are not so extreme when compared with male prisons ("Class Notes," n.d.). Expressions of dominance both in women's and men's prisons also posses another challenge in prisons. Just like male convicts, women prisoners also tend to oppress weaker convicts as a way of gaining special treatment or illegal imports such as drugs. However, the presence of a black market in women's prisons is somewhat limited (Welch, 2011). Moreover, unlike men inmates, greater women convicts have a high risk of being abused sexually by custodial staff. To respond to the challenges experienced in prison, female inmates usually exhibit certain social world features. They tend to form pseudofamilies along with a multifaceted network of friendships and homosexual relationships. Pseudofamilies are comprised of father and mother figures each with different roles (Welch, 2011). The mother functions as a caring, warm, and fostering family figure, and the father takes masculine characters such as acting authoritatively (Welch, 2011). The inmates opt to form pseudo families to get a sense of belonging and to get protection and security against bullying and intimidation from other inmates. Vocational programming in existence in U.S. women's' prisons includes those of training programs that are focused on sex-role stereotyped such as cosmetology and training in office skills. On the other hand, treatment programming that exists involves the one that offers individual and group counseling aimed at reducing substance dependency among inmates (Welch, 2011). I prefer treatment programming because studies have shown that most inmates suffer from drug abuse, sexual abuse, and mental illness.
References
Welch, M. (2011). Corrections: A Critical Approach (3rd ed.). New York: Routledge.
Class Notes. (n.d.) Women in Corrections. PPT.
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