Foreword

Over the past two decades, we have gained considerable new knowledge about women and addiction—about why women become addicted and how these women can be helped to overcome their addiction and the related problems in which addiction is frequently embedded. For many addicted women offenders, their substance abuse is coincident with poverty and multiple psychosocial problems, including mental illness, a history of trauma and abuse, and involvement in abusive relationships. Today, substance-abusing women are entering the jails and prisons of our Nation at unprecedented rates. Yet little research has been done to demonstrate what works best to habilitate and heal addicted women offenders in the criminal justice system.

Services for women offenders are fragmented or absent all across the country, and funds are scarce for developing the comprehensive networks of community service that women need. Yet there is great interest in improving services for women. Many new programs to treat women have been started or are planned in correctional systems across the country. Communications, cooperative planning, the use of peers, volunteers, and mentors, and other creative strategies need not be expensive and can be effective ways to fill the service gaps. This Guide describes many such promising and creative strategies.

In an effort to develop and assess programming for women offenders, the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT) is funding a series of treatment programs for women in prisons and jails. Evaluation results from these projects are just beginning to emerge, but already much has been learned. This report shares the knowledge being gained from nine selected women’s programs— four in State prisons and five in jails or detention centers. All are serving women who have severe substance abuse problems, often of long duration. These programs include longand mid-term residential therapeutic communities (TCs), a prison 4-hours-per-day treatment program, and two intensive short-term (2-week) programs that focus on motivating both sentenced and pre-sentenced women into treatment.

This report is intended for professionals from a wide range of disciplines who work with women involved in some aspect of the criminal justice system. The substance abuse counselors and treatment professionals who work in either the community treatment or corrections fields come from a variety of backgrounds that may include social work, psychology, and psychiatry. Corrections professionals may include sheriffs, wardens, probation and parole officers, and others. This Guidewill also be helpful for State and community-level policymakers who plan and fund substance abuse and corrections programs.

We hope this information—coming from the published literature, an expert advisory panel, the CSAT grant project staffs, CSAT professional staff, and from program documents—will offer helpful guidelines and ideas for designing promising programs to help addicted women in the criminal justice system. Some of the most promising practices include:

• Building a treatment approach that is rooted in an understanding about how women grow and develop, and about how these social and developmental factors affect addiction.
• Using sanctions in creative and reasonable ways that will reinforce treatment goals and engage women in treatment for the necessary length of time.
• Assessing each woman’s needs in a comprehensive, yet flexible, manner so that needs are matched to the intensity and length of care required.
• Providing continuity of care, from the pre-sentencing period through in-custody treatment to continuing treatment and support during the months following release, so that women have an opportunity to develop the skills and resources to survive and contribute to their communities.
• Ensuring that women receive the housing and other services that they need so desperately in the early post-release period, to help them avoid both relapse and recidivism.

As a final note, this report is not intended to be a complete guide or handbook for setting up new programs. It is instead intended to offer women-specific concepts and strategies—a planning framework—for those in the corrections and treatment fields who want to design comprehensive services for women offenders. The resources listed may assist planners to identify more in-depth information.

Nelba Chavez, Ph.D.
Administrator
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

H. Westley Clark, M.D., J.D., M.P.H., CAS, FASAM
Director
Center for Substance Abuse Treatment

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