Barriers and Strategies to Finding Employment for Substance-Involved Women Leaving Jail: A Feminist Analysis

• Published date: 01 October 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/15570851231183733
• Author: Ariel L. Roddy
• Date: 01 October 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Feminist Criminology

2023, Vol. 18(4) 279–301

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/15570851231183733

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Barriers and Strategies to

Finding Employment for

Substance-Involved Women

Leaving Jail: A Feminist

Analysis

Ariel L. Roddy

1



Abstract

Women transitioning from jail contexts have cited employment as their greatest

priority, though this population often has diff‌iculty f‌inding and maintaining employment.

Using an applied thematic analysis and a sample of 60 women leaving substance use

treatment after spending time in jail, this research identif‌ies common barriers to

employment, as well as strategies used to overcome these barriers. The most common

barrier faced by women was transportation, followed by justice system involvement

and physical disabilities/mental health concerns. Though transportation barriers were

most often mentioned, women were also most likely to mention strategies to address

them. Women were least likely to mention strategies to navigate caretaking re-

sponsibilities and physical disabilities/mental health concerns. Finally, this work

identif‌ies several facilitators of employment for women who did not experience

barriers to f‌inding work. The results of this research promote gender-responsive

approaches to employment-related programming.

Keywords

system-involved women, jail, reentry, employment

1

Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Northern Arizona University, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

Corresponding Author:

Ariel L. Roddy, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Northern Arizona University, 5 E.

McConnell Dr., Flagstaff, AZ 86011, USA.

Email: ariel.roddy@nau.edu

Introduction

Women make up a growingpercentage of individuals involved with thecriminal justice

system (Carson, 2020).

1,2,3

The growth of wom en’s incarceration h as disproportionately

been in local jails(Kajstura, 2019), which notoriouslylack transitional servicesrelative to

prisons (Yasu na ga , 200 1). Additionally, there is limited study concerning the needs of

women reentering from jail and how best to benef‌it this growing population (Rodda &

Beichner, 2017). However, based on the f‌indings of past work, it is understood that

system-involved women face barriers to reentry including, but not limited to, housing

access, mental health care, childcare, transportation, and employment (Bloom et al.,

2004;Cobbina,2010;Richie, 2001;Tonkin et al., 2004;van Olphenet al., 2009). Though

all of these concerns related to reentry are pressing, women transitioning from jail

contexts have citedemployment as their greatest priority(Ramaswamy et al., 2015). The

proposed research is designed to explore the relevant barriers to and facilitators of

employment for substance-involved women after spending time in jail.

In addition to identifying common barriers to employment, this article also in-

vestigates system-involved women’s strategies to overcome these barriers to f‌ind work.

A prominent critique from feminist scholars in criminology is that system-involved

women are consistently framed as victims rather than individuals with multiple

pathways into and out of the justice system (Daly & Maher, 1998;Franz et al., 1994).

Using a framework rooted in feminist criminological theory to understand women’s

modes of resilience, coping, and agency in the process of f‌inding work, this article

examines not only the barriers women experience seeking employment, but also the

strategies they use to transcend these diff‌iculties.

Using interviews with 60 women leaving jail settings after spending time in

substance use treatment, this work investigates women’s experiences f‌inding em-

ployment using qualitative methods. The objectives are: 1) to document the barriers and

facilitators of employment for women leaving jail; and 2) to emphasize women’s

agency and resilience in the face of these obstacles. Further, this work is also interested

in the experiences of women who did not experience barriers to employment. As such,

the f‌inal objective of this work is to: 3) examine relevant facilitators of employment.

This f‌inal goal is especially important, as it acknowledges the unique value of negative

cases in criminological research (Sullivan, 2011).

This paper contributes specif‌ically to research related to the needs of women leaving

jail contexts, and more broadly to feminist literature highlighting system-involved

women’s ability to navigate diff‌icult circumstances. Results are used to provide

concrete policy recommendations related to improving job search outcomes for women

with justice system involvement.

Employment and System-Involved Women

Finding and maintaining work has been identif‌ied as an instrumental factor in pro-

moting successful reentry outcomes for previously incarcerated and reentering

280 Feminist Criminology 18(4)