From National Online Resource Center on Women Against Violence:
Women who have experienced abuse in childhood or adulthood, including child maltreatment, sexual molestation or assault, or intimate partner violence,
are more likely to become incarcerated than women who have not experienced abuse. This association between experience of abuse and incarceration is not a mere coincidence. Experience of abuse can lead to increased risk of arrest and incarceration through both direct and indirect pathways. Understanding these pathways and risk factors for incarceration can inform approaches to working with, and on behalf of, women and girls who have been incarcerated or who are at risk of incarceration.
Strategies that women use to cope with the effects of and survive in the face of violence and abuse include behaviors that have been deemed criminal, such as fighting back, use of illegal drugs, and theft. Additionally, abusers may entrap women into crime through coercion enforced through threats of violence,
and may manipulate the legal system to falsely accuse their partners of criminal activity. Women who have engaged in activities that have been criminalized, or those falsely accused of criminalized activities, may face further vulnerability
to arrest and incarceration due to law enforcement policies and practices that are coercive, biased, and/or insensitive to women’s experiences of violence. Women and girls of color, who are immigrants, and/or who are oppressed by poverty may
be particularly subject to such policies and practices.
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