The Invisible Woman. Joanne Belknap
men “across crime type, with a reduction in offending between 21% and 36%,” while the marriage effect on women was only a 10% decrease in property crimes and a 9% increase in drug arrests (p. 104). A study of individuals released from prison found “never being married” impacted (increased) men’s but not women’s likelihood of being arrested for new violent crimes (D. E. Olson, Stalans, & Escobar, 2016, p. 138). Notably, another study found that women’s “marital chances diminish as soon as they have been convicted once,” whereas men’s “are only affected if they have an extensive record” (van Schellen, Poortman, & Nieuwbeerta, 2012). Giordano, Cernkovich, and Rudolph’s (2002) longitudinal study following incarcerated youths into adulthood found neither marriages nor romantic partners were related to keeping either women or men from recidivating.
Social ties as adults appear to be almost exclusively measured in terms of marriage and divorce, denying not only the potentially devastating effects of being in a bad marriage (as compared with being single) but also the significant roles non-spouses/partners play in many people’s lives as “families of choice” (kinships made with nonrelatives). The marriage effect not only has a sexist history, but it is inherently heterosexist given that same-sex marriage was not legal until recent years, and with the current criminal legal system and societal homophobia, some LGBTQI+ offenders likely do not want to disclose their intimate relationship status.
Advancing LCT
Schwartz and Steffensmeier (2017) stress that the empirical applications of LCT must improve addressing intersectionality, agency, and “the gendered mechanisms of selection into crime networks” over ages and lifetimes in offending trajectories and patterns (p. 145). Elaine Gunnison’s (2015) LCT study, using data from the U.S. National Youth Survey, provides a unique latent class analysis to put youth followed over time into four trajectory classifications: de-escalators, persistent de-escalators, persisters, and chronic fluctuators (see Table 3.3). Although the data do not include trauma or abuse variables, they provide a unique way of examining categories of offenders by gender while looking for patterns of peer attachment, delinquent peers, race, alcohol and drug use, and marital status. The only female-dominated group of the four is the de-escalators, who are the least susceptible to peer pressure, have the lowest number of delinquent peers, are more likely to be married, have the lowest drug and alcohol use, and are more likely to be of Color (less likely to be white).
Pathways Theory (PT)
As early as the first two decades of the 1900s, the two scholarly articles on incarcerated women anecdotally noted their risks of coming from chaotic homes, witnessing or experiencing intimate partner abuse, and/or being sexually abused (Guibord, 1917; Spaulding, 1918). There appears, however, to be a significant lapse before scholars once again took up the abusive and traumatic life histories of women offenders. Specifically, starting in the late 1970s, feminist scholarship has increasingly used women and girls’ voices to determine traumatic and other events that place girls (and women) at risk of offending. Unlike the longitudinal data collected over time on individuals by the LCT or CVT researchers (or using such existing prospective data), these studies typically collect data at one point in time, retrospectively interviewing incarcerated women (or girls) about their lives (recall Table 3.2).
Over time, this approach has come be known as the “pathways” and was first given “theory” status in 2006 (Covington & Bloom, 2006). Pathways theory (PT), designed by feminist scholars with little to no funding, has most typically sampled solely girls and women, with a major focus on sexual and physical abuse histories. As stated at the beginning of this chapter, the tenets of PT overlap with many of the tenets of LC and CVT but also with GST and SLT (discussed in Chapter 2). Fundamentally, PT posits that adverse life events, including trauma, can serve as trajectories to offending, and these adverse events may happen in childhood, adulthood, or both. The traumas included in PT are most similar to those in CVT, primarily focusing on child abuse victimization. But a key insight from PT research “is that girls’ and women’s survival strategies lead them into crime—essentially that the state tends to criminalize female responses to [surviving/resisting] abuse” (Chesney-Lind & Chagnon, 2016, p. 314).
Table 3.3
Source: Data from Gunnison, E. (2015). Investigating life course offender subgroup heterogeneity: An exploratory latent class analysis approach. Women & Criminal Justice, 25(4), 223–240.
Notes: Data: U.S. National Youth Survey (Waves 4–7). Sample = 726 youth followed over time. Gunnison (2015) used latent class analysis to examine the differences across these groups: escalators, persistent de-escalators, persisters, and chronic fluctuators.
Studies Consistent With PT That Preceded the Naming of PT
Studies conducted since the late 1970s are very consistent with what was later identified as PT. Most of the following studies are described in chronological order by the date they were published. First, between 1970 and 1975, J. James and Meyerding (1977) interviewed more than 200 women and girl prostitutes/sex workers in a large western city in the United States, finding far higher rates of coerced sex, intercourse at a young age, and incest experienced by these women and girls than were reported in existing research on nonincarcerated (community) women and girls. They identified the women and girls’ childhood sexual victimizations as risk factors for becoming prostitutes and for the pattern of sex work for survival. Silbert and Pines (1981) interviewed 200 racially diverse (69% white, 18% African American, 11% Latina, 2% Native American, and 1% Asian American) current and former prostitutes in the San Francisco Bay area, ranging from 10 to 46 years old. Although two thirds of them came from middle- or higher-income families, almost 90% reported their financial situation at the time of the interview as “just making it” or “very poor” (p. 408). Silbert and Pines found (1) three in five reported sexual abuse before the age of 16, with an average of two sexual abusers each; (2) two thirds of the sexual abuse victims were abused by fathers or father figures (stepfathers, foster fathers, and mothers’ common-law husbands); and (3) 10% were sexually abused by strangers. Furthermore, childhood sexual abuse frequently led to running away from home, which led to prostitution and other street work. Finally, when asked why they started prostituting, 90% said it was because they were hungry, needed money, and had no other options available to them (p. 410). Notably, M. Farley and Barkan’s (1998) study interviewing street sex workers also found three fifths reported child sexual abuse.
Chesney-Lind and Rodriguez’s (1983) intensive interviews with sixteen incarcerated women found half were raped as children, three fifths (62%) reported a range of sexual abuse victimizations (rape and/or other sexual abuses), and three fifths disclosed severe physical child abuse. Similar to findings of Silbert and Pines (1981), about 90% of the women reported involvement in prostitution/sex work, and for most, this was an outgrowth of running away from home in their teens and financial/survival needs. Chesney-Lind and Rodriguez (1983) also reported how subsequent drug dependency was related to further entanglement with the law.
Arnold (1990) conducted intensive interviews, participant observation, and questionnaires with 60 African American women prisoners. Consistent with what is now labeled PT, but also with Kenney’s (2002) concern noted earlier that LT does not address the victimization of major trauma and the subsequent stigmatizing and shaming such victims often experience, Arnold (1990) describes how the incarcerated women she interviewed were labeled and processed as deviants and delinquents as young girls “for refusing to accept or participate in their own victimization” (p. 154). This refusal led to their alienation from three primary socialization institutions: family, educational systems, and occupational systems. This dislocation, in turn, led to their entry into “criminal life.” Arnold documents how patriarchal families and family violence, economic marginality, racist teachers, and poor educational systems individually and collectively produce environments leading to the criminalization of girls, where they are alienated in their own homes, schools, and communities. Furthermore, Arnold reports that these women and girls often “self-medicate” with drugs