Working with Violent Female Offenders

transcript

Annette McKeownChartered & Registered Forensic Psychologist

Division of Forensic Psychology Conference June 2013

Aims & Objectives

• Different Forms of Female Aggression & Violence

• Understanding Female Aggression & Violence

• Female Hidden Violence

• Working with Female Violent Offenders

High Number of Female Violent Offenders in Prison

PopulationTotal Female Sentenced Prison Population March 2013: 3060

Increasingly Violent Women in the Media

Different Forms of Female Aggression

Understanding Aggression and Violence in Females (1)

Swan and Snow (2006)

• Gender differences from young age.

• Boys more likely to be directly and verbally aggressive.

• Indirect and relational aggression particularly common in girls (Crick et al., 2008).

• Aggressive behaviour in girls noted to include: Excluding another child Intentionally ending a friendship Gossiping (Crick, 1996)

• Female violence often in private, domestic arena against themselves or children (Motz, 2010)

• More likely to murder an intimate partner and less likely to murder a stranger (Chan & Frei, 2012).

• Similar levels of domestic violence (Archer, 2000; Winstok & Straus, 2011).

• Suggestions that girls increasingly becoming involved in gangs (Chesney-Lind & Pasko, 2004).

• 8% of women committed violence alongside a male vs. 1% of male offenders (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1999)

• Mothers more likely to murder in infancy whereas fathers more likely to murder when over age of 8.

• Between 1976 and 1997, mothers and stepmothers committed half of murders of children

Women’s Hidden Violence in the Home

• Denial of female aggression (Motz, 2010)

• Idealization of motherhood

• Abusive mothering across generations

•Violence against own body and children as

means of communicating distress(Motz, 2010)

•Projection of own experience of childhood

Women’s Violence Against Children

• Munchausen’ s Syndrome equally spread in men and women

• 85% Munchausen’s By Proxy cases were mother (McCLure et al., 1996)

• Most severe cases usually involve children under age of five.

• Primary purpose is to gain some form of internal gratification, such as attention.

Female Domestic Violence• Women as likely to perpetrate domestic violence as

men (Archer, 2000; 2002; Bookwala, 2002)

• Some cases more severe forms of violence than men (Cercone et al., 2005)

• Female prison populations indicate more often perpetrator than victim in most recent relationship

• No gender-specific treatment programmes

Treatment Challenges with Violent Women

Boundaries

Splitting

Transference

Counter

Transference

Victim/Perpetrator

Stress

Ways forward

Thank you!Any questions?

Annette.mckeown01@hmps.gsi.gov.uk

Working with Violent Female Offenders

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