'Gate Fever' and 'Going Straight': Realities of Release and Reintegration for Female Prisoners

Abstract

Reducing reoffending, reimprisonment and reconviction within one year of release are major policy goals for the New Zealand Government in 2012. Despite men and women having comparably similar reoffending rates, the Ministry of Justice Action Plan which details a series of initiatives to achieve this makes no reference to gender. Existing literature and policy continues to marginalise the reality of women’s lives in the criminal justice system. Women are often subject to overgeneralisations and theoretic framing borrowed from male theories of crime and desistance, generally because women represent a small fraction of the total prison population. There are significant gaps in the existing literature which include women’s experiences of gate fever, desistance and reintegration, which subsequently guided the aims of this thesis. This thesis deepens our understanding of women’s experiences of release by exploring and examining the factors relating to desistance and persistence in crime. By interviewing prisoners and NGO staff, two different perspectives were gained on the reality of women’s lives and whose pathways lead to prison in an exploratory and emergent fashion. Remand prison participants offered unique insights into the processes of desistance and experiences of release. They were the focus of the research because they typically have more acute issues than sentenced prisoners. Remandees also have marginalised access to the interventions which act to safe guard against future offending and address female specific needs and risk factors to reduce female reoffending. Alternate conceptualisations are offered to consider for women’s experiences of prison, release and desistance. Firstly ‘remand fever’ is used to explain the high levels of anxiety and stress associated with the innate uncertainty of remand custody. In addition, female prisoners who had been in custody for a short period of time displayed emotions and behaviours consistent with institutionalisation. This phenomenon was conceptualised as ‘acute institutionalisation’ to explain first-time prisoners and short-term remand prisoners experiencing institutional dependency. These findings have implications for future research and policy development as it calls for greater focus on the importance of gender in responses to prison and the processes of desistance from crime. The implications for service delivery and the design of sustainable reintegration strategies in order to reduce female reoffending are also discussed.