Trauma and Mental Health among Women in the Criminal Legal System: Causes, Consequences, and Solutions

Dear Colleagues,

Welcome to the submission page of this Special Issue on Trauma and Mental Health among Women in the Criminal Legal System: Causes, Consequences, and Solutions.

Justice-involved women are a vulnerable population with high rates of mental illness and exposure to chronic and severe trauma (Harner et al., 2015). A recent literature review (Karlsson & Zielinski, 2020) found that 56–82% of incarcerated women have experienced sexual victimization, many of them since childhood. Unsurprisingly, the most prevalent mental health concerns in this population are diagnoses often associated with traumatic stress including PTSD, depressive disorders, and substance-use disorders. Indeed, interpersonal violence victimization has long been conceptualized as a pathway to prison for women, oftentimes through the development of mental health issues (e.g., Lynch et al., 2017). However, research that goes beyond simply documenting the presence of these issues is limited, and there is a need for greater emphasis on the causes, consequences, and solutions for improving justice-involved women’s health and wellbeing.

This Special Issue aims to build on the well-established connection between traumatic stress and women’s incarceration by soliciting empirical, review, and theoretical articles that can be used to inform efforts to improve the health and well-being of justice-involved women, their families, and their communities. The examples of relevant studies focused on the needs of this population could include intervention and implementation research targeting traumatic stress sequelae; research on the acceptability of interventions, programs, or policies; and/or studies on efforts to address the intergenerational transmission of violence. Studies could also focus on the criminal legal system as it relates to women’s health (e.g., the impact of procedures or policies) or on societal and community-related issues relevant for this population such as SES and poverty, access to care (healthcare and childcare), and/or other human right concerns. Notably, we wish to elicit the high-quality international and interdisciplinary research relevant to this Special Issue and submissions that are focused on women currently or previously involved with the legal system will be accepted to capture the broad potential impact of justice-involvement amongst this population.

References

• Harner, H. M., Riley, S., Budescu, M., Gillihan, S. J., & Foa, E. B. (2015). Posttraumatic stress disorder in incarcerated women: A call for evidence-based treatment. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 7(1), 58-66–66. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0032508.
• Karlsson, M. E., & Zielinski, M. J. (2020). Sexual Victimization and Mental Illness Prevalence Rates Among Incarcerated Women: A Literature Review. Trauma, Violence & Abuse, 21(2), 326–349.
• Lynch, S. M., Wong, M. M., DeHart, D. D., Belknap, J., Green, B. L., Dass-Brailsford, P., & Johnson, K. M. (2017). An Examination of the Associations Among Victimization, Mental Health, and Offending in Women. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 44(6), 796-814–814. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093854817704452.

Please submit your proposals and any questions to special issue guest editors by 15 May 2024. Notification of acceptance will be provided by 1 May 2024. Final papers are due on 1 November 2024 for peer review.

Dr. Marie Karlsson
Dr. Melissa J. Zielinski
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• trauma sequelae
• traumatic stress
• interpersonal violence
• sexual victimization
• incarcerated women
• evidence-based treatment
• evidence-based practice
• mental health
• prison
• jail
• reentry
• court
• criminal legal system
• women
• implementation
• intervention