BOOK CREDITS WOMEN'S SHELTERS FOR SAVING MEN'S LIVES
Battered women's shelters save lives. Increasingly, though, over the last 20 years that has meant the lives of abusers rather than the women who flee to shelters. That's what Katherine van Wormer asserts in her latest book, Women and the Criminal Justice System. "I found out in doing research for this book that women's shelters are saving the lives of men more than women," said van Wormer, a social work professor at the University of Northern Iowa. "The women don't have to shoot their husbands anymore or poison them. They can go to shelters."
The rate at which women nationwide are killing intimates--a husband, partner, ex-husband, or close relativ--has been cut almost in half since 1977, according to a 1998 Bureau of Justice Statistics report. The number of female victims killed by intimates has remained fairly constant during the same time period.
Van Wormer believes the increased availability off shelters has helped more women escape the abuse and drug use in their home life that may have driven them to commit murder. In 1996, the nation's 1,800 intimate murders included 450 cases in which women killed a husband or boyfriend.
Van Wormer co-wrote the book with University of Northern Iowa criminology professor Clemens Bartollas. It's the fourth book for van Wormer and the 19th book for Bartollas. Van Wormer and Bartollas aren't just writing about women victims and inmates, though. They also address the issue of women in law, policing, and corrections professions. The book looks at those women through the lenses of class and race. "Women victims (and criminals) tend to be lower class, and professionals tend to be middle class," Bartollas noted. In addition, victims and criminals tend to be minorities.
"We combine the social work approach with the emphasis on empowerment," said van Wormer. The empowerment approach is prominent in the social work field and is used in treatment for female offenders. She said the approach can help women negotiate their way through the system and deal with self-esteem problems. "Even the most vulnerable and oppressed people have strength they can tap into and resources," she said.
Empowerment can be useful both for women being locked up in prison and those on the other side of the law. The sheer number of women becoming attorneys is giving females more power in the system, van Wormer said. "If you want to change the system, you have to get into the system."
Bartollas believes it has been harder for women to gain acceptance in law enforcement. "A woman police officer is trying to make it in a men's club," he said. "Up until the '70s, women were not able to wear uniforms and guns. It's been a very grudging degree of acceptance." Nonetheless, he said, the dozen or more studies show there's little difference between male and female police. "Women perform every bit as well as men, even in violent situations," he said.
The subject of women criminals is a familiar one for van Wormer. Her doctoral dissertation studied women in Alabama prisons. Over the years, she has continued corresponding with women inmates. In the last five years, she said, the idea has emerged of a "new breed" of hardened criminal women. Van Wormer disputes the validity of that idea, which she believes is part of an "anti-woman backlash."
As women have attained increased equality with men in society, van Wormer sees a greater tendency to treat women going through the criminal justice system no differently than men. "It's called equality with a vengeance," said van Wormer. Women are now being incarcerated at a faster rate than men, with more women in prison than ever before.
"We've become such a punitive society, and women have been bearing the brunt of this," she said, blaming the increase on the war on drugs. Many women get involved in the drug trade through their partners, answering phones, or delivering drugs to buyers. "They are being turned in by the very men who got them into drug dealing because that's the only way (the men) can get their sentences reduced," she said.
Mandatory minimum prison sentences, which van Wormer believes should be done away with, are also keeping women locked up longer. "I'm saying every case--men and women--they should take the individual case into account," she said. "They need to get rid of these mandatory sentences."
--Women and the Criminal Justice System, by Kathrine van Wormer and Clemens Bartollas, is published by Allyn & Bacon, A Pearson Education Company, 160 Gould St., Needham Heights, MA 02494.
--Andrew Wind is a Staff Writer for the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier. His book review is reprinted with permission.