Research Collaboration with Experts: Women Impacted By the Legal System Impart Their Views for Reform and Change

Background and Purpose: It is well-established that women involved in the legal system face more severe and complex emotional and economic struggles than both women who are not involved in the legal system and men who are outside and within the system. Although women are the fastest growing population in the legal system, little is known about how they perceive the complexities of this system and their experiences within it. Inclusion of individuals with lived experiences within research studies and dissemination, especially those from marginalized communities, provides community members, practitioners, policy makers, and researchers with a more holistic and deeper understanding of the impact of these systems. The purpose of this study was not to ask women to focus on their experiences within the system and the traumas that it created and exacerbated. Rather, this study aimed to bring women into the conversation as the experts that they are and asked them to engage in the co-creation of knowledge and solutions that more specifically and intentionally address the problems within the legal system and identify more equitable and supportive ways to serve future generations of women who interact with various punitive institutions and systems.

Methods: Participants were recruited from an urban women’s drop-in center. To be eligible for the study, participants had to identify as women, be over the age of 18, have at least one felony arrest, speak fluent English, and understand the elements of the project. Phenomenology guided this research, as all participants had common experiences with the legal system. As a way to build trust over time, researchers interviewed women three separate times using semi-structured interview surveys. Participants were also given gift cards after each interview. Interview transcriptions were analyzed by a team of researchers. Researchers also facilitated a group check-in with participants and other interested parties to ensure that the researchers’ interpretations of the interview themes were accurate and as a way to collaborate with the participants regarding the research and dissemination processes.

Results: Eighteen women completed all three semi-structured interviews. Through the analysis of participant narratives, several themes emerged: motivation for participating in the study, not being listened to or heard by those in power, usefulness of some programs, barriers to success, navigating confusing bureaucracy, and conflicts between the perspectives of academics and experts with lived experience.

Conclusions and Implications: The information gathered from these interviews will ideally lead to more conversations and research into what improved and effective policies and services might actually look like. By incorporating the voices of justice-impacted women into this research, we acknowledged them as valuable informants into how to develop the future of the criminal legal and carceral systems so that fewer women are needlessly harassed, arrested, and incarcerated. If social work clinicians, policymakers, and researchers are going to work successfully towards reducing the number of women in the legal system, integrating the perspectives of, and collaborating with, women who have been directly impacted is a crucial step towards the creation of more equitable and just responses and systems.