Women Offenders

‘I’ve Got Into This Job ‘cos I’ve Got a Past’: Exploring the Dynamics in the Relationships Between Women Offenders and Communitybased Project Workers

Claire Fox, from the University of Manchester, made a contribution to the 2012 Annual Conference of the European Society of Criminology, in the category “Punishment and its alternatives,” under the title “‘I’ve Got Into This Job ‘cos I’ve Got a Past’: Exploring the Dynamics in the Relationships Between Women Offenders and Communitybased Project Workers”. Here is the abstract: Drawing from recent research on local, multi-agency responses to supporting women offenders and prisoners in the context of the Diversion Programme (2009), this paper explores the complex relationship between the staff and women offenders at the ‘Release Project’, a community-based project for diverting women from custody based in a city in the midlands of England. Using the experiences of staff at the project alongside the perspectives of the women who were accessing the service, the importance of positive formal relationships to women offenders using the ‘Release Project’ will be discussed. The paper will also draw attention to the varying, sometimes problematic elements of these relationships, which both women and workers encountered. Specifically, the role of ‘experiential narrative’ or ‘knowing otherwise’ (Walklate and Mythen, 2011) in staff decision-making and interactions with women offenders and the processes of (over)identification will be considered.[rtbs name=”criminology”]

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Further Reading

• “‘I’ve Got Into This Job ‘cos I’ve Got a Past’: Exploring the Dynamics in the Relationships Between Women Offenders and Communitybased Project Workers”, by Claire Fox (Proceedings)