A new set of articles has been posted to NIC's Corrections and Mental Health Update, a blog covering mental health practices.  All of these new articles address the theme of women and girls in the corrections system.

The main feature, “Young Adult Outcomes of Girls Involved in Juvenile Justice System: Distinct Patterns of Risk and Protection,” analyzes the various outcomes that adolescent girls who have engaged in delinquent behavior experience as adults. Several measures were used to assess the level of functioning of the young women, including arrest records, participation in substance-use treatment, participation in mental health treatment, and income-maintenance status. Charlotte Lyn Bright, Ph.D., of the University of Maryland, Baltimore, and Patricia L. Kohl, Ph.D., and Melissa Jonson-Reid, Ph.D., of Washington University in St. Louis, found that the outcomes young women experience are associated with patterns and characteristics they developed earlier in life as well as the services they received from the juvenile system.

This update also includes articles on the following topics:  

• Integrating therapy for trauma to inmates, particularly women, in correctional facilities and community-based treatment programs
• Differences between male and female juvenile offenders concerning the prevalence rates of various mental health symptoms
• A literature review of the "syndemic" of substance abuse, violence, and HIV in women
• A Canadian aftercare program that reduces recidivism among women on parole
• Ways in which the criminal justice system responds to gender and how that may influence the increasing rates of incarceration among women
• How post-prison treatment, also called aftercare, can help women adjust to community life and avoid recidivism.
• Rates of behaviors that increase the risk for HIV infection differ for men and women before and after release from jail, pointing to the need for gender-specific HIV education among jail inmates.

We hope you will find these articles to be both thought-provoking and useful.