The Challenges of Mentally Ill Female Offenders in Prison

Abstract

An increasing number of women offenders arrive in prison with serious mental health problems. Such inmates tend to experience difficulties negotiating the prison environment. They create all sorts of predicaments for other prisoners and instigate crisis situations that present pressing challenges to members of the staff. One prevalent form of symptomatic behavior in women's prisons is that of self-injury, which carries the risk of death or serious impairment. Self-harm should not be the sort of behavior that invites disciplinary dispositions. Mentally ill women also become involved in disproportionate serious rule breaking, including assaultive acts, leading to inappropriate placement in segregation cells, where their difficulties are apt to become exacerbated. To address this problem, special settings can be created to accommodate some chronically disturbed women, but these serve to merely ameliorate a seemingly insoluble dilemma.