Homeless Female Offenders Returning to the Community: Improving Hopeful Futures

描述（由申请人提供）：在过去十年中，被监禁的女性人数增加了两倍，使女性成为美国增长最快的罪犯群体。与被监禁的男性相比，女性罪犯因毒品犯罪被判刑的比例更高；此外，她们往往是注射吸毒者，她们的性伴侣也是注射吸毒者，她们常常被迫从事性交易以求生存。多达50%的女性罪犯报告遭受身体和/或性虐待；此外，创伤性虐待、长期的情绪困扰以及因重罪犯和吸毒者而产生的内在耻辱对妇女的自尊产生深远影响，导致绝望和沮丧的感觉，延迟恢复和重新融入社会，增加危险行为和健康问题。毫不奇怪，被监禁的女性患精神疾病的可能性几乎是没有犯罪的女性的两倍；此外，44%的人因持有管制药物而在一年内再犯。特别是，在无家可归的女性罪犯中，假释者和缓刑者都报告说，成功重返社会面临着持续的挑战。这些问题包括住房不稳定、生活混乱、失业以及获得保健和社会服务的机会有限。虽然洛杉矶县缓刑局在其针对女性罪犯的加州蓝图总体规划中为成功的项目提供了指导，但建议的增强赋权、积极应对和工作技能的策略，以及提供同伴指导的方法，尚未得到实施或评估。在R34的第一阶段，我们的加州大学洛杉矶分校、旧金山分校和欧文分校的研究人员团队计划利用我们成功的社区参与式方法，在由hfo和成瘾工作人员组成的社区咨询委员会的帮助下，完善一个对性别敏感的犯罪需求为重点的干预项目——女性前罪犯护理指导（femm - Care）；并最终确定战略，这些战略将通过与hfo的焦点小组会议进行验证。在第二阶段，我们将随机抽取130名hfo参加两个住院药物治疗项目中的一个，以评估femm - care或健康促进控制项目对减少药物和酒精使用和再犯罪率的影响。这项研究是基于我们的团队的历史，促进理论为基础，文化敏感的护士主导的干预

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): In the last decade, the numbers of incarcerated females has tripled, making women the most rapidly growing group of offenders in the United States. When compared to incarcerated males, female offenders have a higher rate of being sentenced for drug crimes; moreover, they are often injection drug users (IDUs), have sexual partners who are IDUs, and are often forced into the sex trade for survival. As many as 50 percent of female offenders report physical and/or sexual abuse; further, traumatic abuse, chronic emotional distress, and internalized stigma resulting from being a felon and a drug-user, have a profound effect on the women's self-esteem, leading to feelings of hopelessness and depression, delayed recovery and reintegration, increased risky behaviors, and health concerns. Not surprisingly, women who have been incarcerated are nearly twice as likely to experience mental illness compared with non-offending women; further, 44 percent recidivate within a year due to possession of a controlled substance. In particular, among homeless female offenders (HFOs), both parolees and probationers report ongoing challenges for successful re-entry. These include unstable housing, disorganized lives, unemployment, and limited access to health and social services. While the Los Angeles County Department of Probation has provided guidance for successful programs in its California Blueprint Master Plan for Female Offenders, the suggested strategies of enhancing empowerment, positive coping, and job skills, and providing peer-mentored approaches have not yet been implemented or evaluated. In Phase I of this R34, our team of University of California Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Irvine researchers plan to utilize our successful community participatory approaches to refine a gender-sensitive criminogenic needs - focused intervention program, Female Ex-Offender Mentoring in Care (FEM-CARE), with the help of a community advisory board, composed of HFOs and addiction staff; and finalize strategies which will be validated by focus group sessions with HFOs. In Phase II, we will randomize 130 HFOs participating in one of two residential drug treatment programs to assess the impact of the FEM-CARE or a Health Promotion control program on reduction of drug and alcohol use and recidivism. This study is based upon our team's history of promoting theoretically-based, culturally- sensitive nurse-led interventions that are enriched with criminal justice theoretical perspectives, and have resulted in significant reductions in drug and alcohol use among homeless persons, many of whom have had a history of incarceration. Our most recent successes in engaging male parolees in nurse-supported peer mentorship, our team's expertise in enhancing stigma reduction among vulnerable women, and our criminal justice experts have informed this study. Finally, recent formative research with HFOs has revealed a desire for peer role models to support and enhance knowledge of and access to healthcare, promote positive coping, stable housing, and job skills, and to reduce stigma and depressed mood; all of these factors can result in novel programs designed to prevent drug and alcohol use and reduce recidivism. This foundation and strong community support garnered has led to the design of our proposed intervention program.