The Relevance of Women’s Economic Marginalization to Recidivism

• Date: 01 March 2022
• DOI: 10.1177/00938548211039545
• Published date: 01 March 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR, 2022, Vol. 49, No. 3, March 2022, 330 –349.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/00938548211039545

Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions

© 2021 International Association for Correctional and Forensic Psychology

330

THE RELEVANCE OF WOMEN’S ECONOMIC

MARGINALIZATION TO RECIDIVISM

MERRY MORASH

DEBORAH A. KASHY

Michigan State University

This study examines whether changes over time in women’s criminogenic needs, particularly their financial needs, predict

recidivism. In a 9-year longitudinal study, 304 women were interviewed repeatedly during 4.5 years after probation/parole

began. Women provided data on both their gender-specific and gender-neutral criminogenic needs. Women’s average stand-

ing on each need and an index of their change in the need over time were computed and used to predict subsequent recidivism

over the 3.4 years after the final interview. Women whose financial needs decreased were less likely to be rearrested and

convicted relative to other women. The findings highlight the importance of considering a multifaceted and gender-specific

definition of economic marginalization in both theory and practice. At the policy level, there is a need to reduce justice-

involved women’s financial needs. In addition, further longitudinal research should be conducted to understand how different

type of changes in women’s lives impact recidivism.

Keywords: feminist theory; economic marginalization; women; recidivism; criminogenic need

When feminist criminologists first turned their attention to the unique circum-

stanc es and pathways into illegal activity of women, they emphasized economic

marginalization—the lack of access to basic services, income opportunities, and jobs—as

motivation for women to break the law (Carlen, 1988; Daly, 1992; Maher & Daly, 1996;

Miller, 1986). In contrast, with exceptions (Salisbury & Van Voorhis, 2009; Wilfong et al.,

2021), contemporary correctional practice and related theory have focused on individual

psychological and social attributes (e.g., mental health, antisocial friends) as influences on

recidivism (Bakken & Visher, 2018; Huebner et al., 2010; Kushel et al., 2005; Scott et al.,

2014). This emphasis complements widely accepted correctional practices based on social

learning and behavioral theory, which identify internal change as the key to reducing recidi-

vism (Andrews & Bonta, 2010). Given the different levels of attention paid to varying types

of influences on women’s recidivism, it is useful to revisit the effects of women’s economic

standing on their recidivism.

AUTHORS’ NOTE: This article is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant

No. 1126162 and Grant No. 1430372, and by a Strategic Partnership grant from the Michigan State University

Foundation. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Merry Morash, School of Criminal

Justice, Michigan State University, 655 Auditorium Rd., E. Lansing, MI 48824; e-mail: morashm@msu.edu.

1039545CJBXXX10.1177/00938548211039545Criminal Justice and BehaviorMorash, Kashy / Women’s Economic Marginalization to Recidivism

research-article2022

Morash, Kashy / WOMEN’S ECONOMIC MARGINALIZATION TO RECIDIVISM 331

There is reason to expect that economic marginalization is a particularly important influ-

ence on women’s recidivism. At least since the 1980s, research has repeatedly documented

that women who broke the law have uniquely high levels of poverty. This has been shown

in one national U.S. study (Greenfeld & Snell, 1999) and many local samples of justice-

involved women (Bloom et al., 2003; Heimer, 2000; Holsinger et al., 2003; Holtfreter et al.,

2004; Olson et al., 2000; Van Voorhis et al., 2008). For example, Heilbrun et al. (2008)

found that for the financial domain of a risk assessment measure, a higher proportion of

justice-involved women scored as high or very high, whereas justice-involved men more

often scored in the very low to low range. A study of 581 Minnesota women in prison, on

probation, or in a drug court program found that more than 40% were unemployed and more

than 50% had incomes of US$10,000 a year or less (Wright et al., 2008). For a multistate

sample of 357 women leaving prison, 80% or more of the women reported persisting needs

for each of three economic resources—financial assistance, medical insurance, and employ-

ment (Lindquist et al., 2010). These statistics underscore the importance of examining the

connection of economic marginalization to women’s recidivism. We refer to this examina-

tion as a test of the economic marginalization hypothesis.

According to theory-based correctional practice, reductions in causes of illegal behavior

are associated with lower recidivism, and increases in these causes are associated with

higher recidivism. To our knowledge, only one prior study (Greiner et al., 2015) examined

the relationship between change in economic marginalization as indicated by employment

and recidivism. To further understand the association between recidivism and changes in

risk, we tested the connection of both level and change in economic marginalization to

recidivism. In addition, we used a multifaceted measure of economic marginalization that

had been developed specifically for women (Van Voorhis, 2012). Finally, to strengthen the

test of the economic marginalization hypothesis, we included predictors that prior studies

suggested were especially relevant to women (Davidson & Chesney-Lind, 2009; Holtfreter

& Cupp, 2007).

LITERATURE ON ECONOMIC MARGINALIZATION

Qualitative studies have documented how economic marginalization has motivated

women in a variety of settings to break the law. These studies were of New York City

women charged with robbery and aggravated assault (Sommers & Baskin, 1993), Milwaukee

women described as “street hustlers” (Miller, 1986), Brooklyn, New York women who used

crack cocaine and earned money as sex workers (Maher, 1997; Maher & Daly, 1996),

Connecticut women in court for lawbreaking (Daly, 1992), and women who broke the law

in Great Britain (Carlen, 1988). Although these studies revealed how economic marginal-

ization influenced women’s lawbreaking, they did not focus on change over time, and they

could not shed light on competing influences in the way that is possible with quantitative

multivariate analysis.

Some quantitative research has shown a connection of women’s level of economic mar-

ginalization to recidivism. Based on family size and several types of reported income,

Holtfreter and colleagues (2004) determined whether 134 women who had been convicted

of a felony in Oregon and Minnesota fell below the U.S. Census Bureau’s cutoff for poverty.

After including covariates in a multivariate test of the prediction of recidivism, they found

that poverty increased the odds of self-reported arrest and self-reported technical violations