Women on Probation and Parole by Morash Merry;

Author:Morash, Merry;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Northeastern University Press

THE PROLIFERATION OF POSITIVE CHANGES

Women who move beyond the struggle over treatment experience numerous positive changes in their lives and in themselves. They stop living in places with easy access to drugs. Some stop using drugs entirely. As they cut drug use, they reconnect with noncriminal family members, engage in educational programs, prepare for employment, and start working. They attend parenting programs, and a few keep or regain child custody. Developing a relationship with a partner who is not drug-centered or abusive is another possible change.

The women in this study described benefits from groups and treatment, including support, structure, learning, referrals, and advocacy. They developed positive self-perceptions, learned to think problems through, and gained decision-making skills. These benefits came from relationships with supervising officers, primarily those in Gender Responsive County, and with substance abuse treatment staff, counselors, social workers, psychologists, and lawyers. They also resulted from interactions with peers in treatment groups. How did some women get past drug-centered lifestyles and relationships, and the challenges of getting into and completing substance abuse treatment? How did they come to experience positive relationships, settings, and internal changes?

Most often, full engagement in a substance abuse treatment program precedes other changes. First, women get clean, then they leave abusive and criminal partners, acquire law-abiding partners, develop noncriminal support networks, and obtain education and work skills. Some find work and advance in their careers. This sequence of events occurs in part because women who stop using drugs are motivated and able to find and keep partners who do not use drugs. They actively want to leave drug-using partners. Judy, supervised in Gender Responsive County, made the positive changes that stem from engaging in substance abuse treatment. By the end of the study, she had earned her GED. A relative offered financial assistance until her job search proved fruitful. Also, she arranged a stable housing situation, rooming with another participant in her substance abuse treatment program. She successfully completed parole. In a pattern that other researchers also document, internal perceptions and motivations cause offenders to begin to desire, and then to find, prosocial social networks (Giordano, Cernkovich, and Holland 2003). In a few cases, women in the study who used drugs during the year, but otherwise were law-abiding, experienced positive changes before they stopped using drugs. However, in most cases, a series of positive changes started with substance abuse treatment that promoted abstinence from drugs; subsequently, there were both internal and external beneficial changes.

As would be expected, given the higher emphasis in Gender Responsive County on women’s relationships with supervising officers and entry into treatment, the counties differ in terms of multiple positive changes for women. In Gender Responsive County, 66.7 percent (eighteen of twenty-seven) of active users who were making it participated in substance abuse treatment programs and had subsequent, multiple positive changes. In Traditional County, 35 percent (seven of twenty) of women followed this pattern of treatment’s leading to positive changes of many types. Supervising officers affected the process differently in the two counties. Most Gender Responsive County women (77.

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