Why Some Women Get Arrested: Conversations with Female Substance Abuse Treatment Residents

Background and Purpose: Women are entering the criminal justice system in rates outpacing their male counterparts. Most research on women’s criminality involves women who are already justice-involved. In an attempt to better understand why some women with similar risk factors enter the system and others do not, the researcher conducted this study outside of the formal justice system by talking with female residents in three substance abuse treatment programs. The research question was: Why do some female participants of substance abuse treatment become involved in the criminal justice system and others do not?

Methods: This qualitative study used transcripts from five focus groups conducted in three different substance abuse treatment facilities in the South – two facilities in a rural setting and one facility in an urban area. Three of the five groups included women with histories of criminal justice involvement (at least one arrest), and two of the groups included women without such histories (no arrests). The transcripts were entered into NVivo and, using grounded theory as the guiding method, initially coded by “significant statements” (Creswell, 2013). These significant statements were then collected into what Creswell (2013) refers to as “clusters of meaning” and coded accordingly.

Results: Some of the major reoccurring themes from the focus group discussions included: the inevitability of criminal justice involvement, privilege, personality, inter-personal relationships with other women, interactions with the police, parenting, suggestions for police training, and treatment programming improvements. Women in both groups discussed their perspective of substance use ultimately leading to criminal justice involvement; how their own privilege and personality could positively impact how some police officers treated them; their healthy and harmful inter-personal relationships with other women; decisions they made about their own behavior during police interactions; the positive effect of having a previous relationship with a specific officer and the likelihood of arrest; the struggles they have in their relationships with their children; areas – like mental health, substance abuse, and trauma – where they believed police needed additional training; and suggestions for improvements in treatment programs (e.g. animal therapy, yoga, cooking classes).

Conclusions and Implications: The women in this study provided multiple insights regarding how they view their addiction and their recovery and how they navigate through and around the criminal justice system. In all of the focus groups, women discussed ways in which they felt they or other women were responsible for their criminal justice involvement and ways in which they felt the system had failed them. They also made suggestions for how police training and treatment programming could be improved upon to support them in their pursuit of recovery and avoidance of the justice system. Additional research involving women outside the formal justice system would provide important insights into why some women ultimately end up in the criminal justice system and why others do not. Adding to this literature could potentially aid in developing policies and programs that would support women at risk for entering the justice system, ultimately reducing the number of justice-involved women overall.