Gender-responsive treatment to improve outcomes for women and girls in correctional settings: foundations, limitations and innovations

This report presents updated research evidence that continues to amplify the need for gender-responsive principles and practices, including the role of victimization in girls’ and women’s offending trajectories and the intersection of relationships, relational identity, and trauma as key drivers for justice involvement. Further, because the perinatal needs of justice-involved women are a frequently overlooked area of inquiry among the gender-responsive literature, this scholarship is also summarized using a reproductive justice framework. Finally, this report illustrates the impact of gender-responsive scholarship by sharing some of the practice and technology innovations that have emerged, while acknowledging there is much yet to accomplish.