“Terrified of a System I Didn’t Understand”: Reporting Staff Sexual Misconduct Against Women on Parole

• Author: Sheryl Pimlott Kubiak,Kathleen Darcy,Gina Fedock
• DOI: 10.1177/15570851211045641
• Published date: 01 April 2022
• Date: 01 April 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Feminist Criminology

2022, Vol. 17(2) 252–273

© The Author(s) 2021

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/15570851211045641

journals.sagepub.com/home/fcx

“Terrified of a System I

Didn’t Understand”:

Reporting Staff Sexual

Misconduct Against Women

on Parole

Kathleen Darcy

1

, Gina Fedock

2

, and Sheryl Pimlott Kubiak

3

Abstract

Incarcerated women experience staff-perpetrated sexual victimization at high rates, yet

limited research exists regarding women’s experiences of this victimization while on

probation and parole, particularly regarding their formal reporting decisions. This

qualitative study explored the formal reporting decisions for 10 women who expe-

rienced staff-perpetrated sexual victimization while on parole. Women who formally

reported their victimization experiences qualitatively differed from non-reporting

women in terms of the dynamics and their identification of victimization (e.g.,

viewing as support vs. fear) and in the types of structural barriers (e.g., vulnerability and

cautionary tales) they encountered. These findings highlight policy, practice, theory,

and research directions.

Keywords

parole, women’s re-entry, sexual violence, staff sexual misconduct, community

corrections

1

School of Criminal Justice, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

2

Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

3

School of Social Work, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA

Corresponding Author:

Kathleen Darcy, School of Criminal Justice, Michigan State University, 140 Baker Hall, 655 Auditorium

Road, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA.

Email: darcykat@msu.edu

Correctional staff-perpetrated sexual victimization violates institutional policies, state-

level criminal laws, and federal policy mandates, yet a high number of incarcerated

women experience this form of victimization, which is often framed as a form of

gendered social control (Beck et al., 2014;Thomas & Zaitzow, 2003). Little attention is

given to detecting, addressing, and preventing correctional staff-perpetrated sexual

victimization that occurs while women are under forms of community-based cor-

rectional supervision, contributing to a neglect of this form of victimization ( Yarussi &

Smith, 2013). Some women who experience this form of victimization may formally

report these experiences in order to stop the abuse and to receive assistance. The context

of their decision-making about reporting includes multiple forms of system-level power

dynamics that work to circumvent and constrain women’s power and choice (Goffman,

1961;Goodstein et al., 1984;Kubiak et al., 2018). Existing research is limited in

regards to women’s decision-making with attention to the power dynamics of this

context. Thus, this study utilized grounded theory methods to qualitatively explore the

reporting decisions of 10 women on parole regarding their experiences of correctional

staff-perpetrated sexual victimization and found a striking dynamic of individual-level

and structural factors that influence women’s decision-making. The implications of this

study push for nuanced, deepened theory advancement about the experiences of this

population of women that explicitly account for multiple forms of power dynamics, as

well as policy and practice changes.

Background

Rape and other types of sexual assault perpetrated against incarcerated women by

correctional staff have received both national and international attention (Cul ley, 2012;

Human Rights Watch, 1996;Siegal, 1991;Smith, 2020). This abuse (referred to

formally as staff sexual misconduct) encompasses a wide range of behaviors, including

privacy violations, sexual harassment, indecent exposure, inappropriate touching, and

oral, vaginal, and anal penetration (Beck et al., 2013). Justice-involved women dis-

proportionately experience sexual victimization by correctional staff; they represent

41% of victims, despite the fact that they make up only approximately 7% of all

prisoners in the United States (Beck et al., 2014).

While the United States has close to 2.3 million people currently under correctional

supervision, the vast majority of them are under some form of community supervision,

an umbrella term for a complex array of agencies, supervision structures, and facilities

(Jones, 2018;National Prison Rape Elimination Commission, 2009). In 2019, most

justice-involved women (over 1 million women) were under community supervision

(Carson, 2020). Women under community supervision face a number of issues, in-

cluding needing to obtain stable housing, establish sufficient employment, and report to

and comply with probation or parole officers’conditions (Holtfreter & Morash, 2003;

Morash, 2010). However, as with women’s pathways to criminal justice system in-

volvement, their barriers to re-entry differ from men (Blackwell, 2020;Burgess-

Proctor, 2006;Daly, 1992;Voorhis, 2012). For example, women are more likely to

Darcy et al. 253