Читать книгу The Invisible Woman - Joanne Belknap - Страница 75

In the past decade there has been a growing recognition of the strong overlap between offending and serious mental illness (SMI). In 2009, in a study of 822 women and men in five jails in New York and Maryland, Steadman, Osher, Robbins, and Case published their results that women (31.0%) were twice as likely as men (14.5%) to be SMI. A multisite study in the United States confirmed this with findings that 32% of the women met the criteria for SMI (S. M. Lynch et al., 2014). Furthermore, this study found that one quarter of women in the jails met the criteria for SMI, posttraumatic stress disorder, and substance use disorder (S. M. Lynch et al., 2014). Among these jailed women, many of the women met these three criteria for the previous 12 months, and SMI and trauma were associated with the onset of crime. Moreover, the women with SMI were more likely to have experienced trauma, to have run away from home as girls, to have had an earlier onset of substance use disorder, and to be repeat offenders (S. M. Lynch et al., 2014).

Notably, one recent study of girls, comparing the behavior problems, family and peer relations, and academic performance of serious (felony) violent offenders, serious nonviolent offenders, and nondelinquent girls, found no differences among the violent and nonviolent delinquent girls, but the nondelinquent girls reported far fewer of these problems (Borduin & Ronis, 2012). Similarly, a study of incarcerated women found their cumulative victimizations negatively affected their psychosocial functioning and not only increased their likelihood of committing violent crimes (including homicide) but also increased their risks of committing property crimes, drug offenses, and prostitution (DeHart, 2008). Taken together, these studies not only attest to the high rates of SMI among women offenders but also how SMI intersects with offending (and reoffending), substance use, and trauma.