Urges Gender-Specific Considerations in Law Enforcement
RESOLVED, That the American Bar Association urges the Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. Marshals Service, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and state, tribal and local correctional authorities to develop and implement gender-responsive needs assessments that account for women’s specific needs, including parenting responsibilities, the importance of their relationships, their histories of domestic violence and abuse, and their distinctive patterns and prevalence of mental health issues.
FURTHER RESOLVED, That the American Bar Association urges that these needs assessments link women to appropriate gender-responsive programming, including programs targeted to address parenting responsibilities, women’s histories of domestic violence and abuse, their distinctive patterns and prevalence of mental health issues, substance abuse and its co-occurrence with trauma and mental health issues.
FURTHER RESOLVED, That the American Bar Association urges that correctional authorities revise security risk assessments to avoid overclassification of women and to reflect actual security risk by using only predictive static and dynamic gender-neutral risk factors, setting scale cut-off points, and designing custody classification systems that fit agency missions.
FURTHER RESOLVED, That the American Bar Association urges that correctional authorities address additional causes of female overclassification, where present, by training correctional officers on how to work with female inmates, redefining the meaning of “maximum custody” for female prisoners, and transitioning the majority of female inmates to a community correctional paradigm.
RESOLVED, That the American Bar Association urges the Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. Marshals Service, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and state, tribal and local correctional authorities to develop and implement gender-responsive needs assessments that account for women’s specific needs, including parenting responsibilities, the importance of their relationships, their histories of domestic violence and abuse, and their distinctive patterns and prevalence of mental health issues.
FURTHER RESOLVED, That the American Bar Association urges that these needs assessments link women to appropriate gender-responsive programming, including programs targeted to address parenting responsibilities, women’s histories of domestic violence and abuse, their distinctive patterns and prevalence of mental health issues, substance abuse and its co-occurrence with trauma and mental health issues.
FURTHER RESOLVED, That the American Bar Association urges that correctional authorities revise security risk assessments to avoid overclassification of women and to reflect actual security risk by using only predictive static and dynamic gender-neutral risk factors, setting scale cut-off points, and designing custody classification systems that fit agency missions.
FURTHER RESOLVED, That the American Bar Association urges that correctional authorities address additional causes of female overclassification, where present, by training correctional officers on how to work with female inmates, redefining the meaning of “maximum custody” for female prisoners, and transitioning the majority of female inmates to a community correctional paradigm.
