The needs of prison inmates
A lack of evidence on the needs of young women offenders has prompted a Canterbury University tutor and former prison social worker to undertake her own research on the needs of this population group.
Sophie Goldingay has been a practitioner for 11 years, and six of these were working for the Corrections Department as a social worker and team leader for Southern Regional Prisons. She currently works as a tutor for Canterbury University’s School of Social Work, and provides clinical supervision and consultancy services for organisations and individual practitioners.
She has recently been awarded a SPEaR Linkages postgraduate scholarship to support her research for a Master of Arts in Social Work. Her research title is “Separation, Segregation or Mixing: Housing Issues for Young Female Offenders in New Zealand Prisons”.
Sophie is looking at whether young female offenders – those aged between 14 and 19 years – need separate accommodation from their adult counterparts while serving a prison sentence. She is also examining whether the present young female inmate population feel their social, cultural and safety needs are being met by the current accommodation arrangements.
“The female prison population is one of the least understood populations,” Sophie says.
“There is a body of opinion that says the needs of young women offenders are not being met by housing them in a mixed-age prison environment, and that they are bullied and ‘contaminated’ by the older women.
“There have also been assumptions that older women will ‘mother’ the younger ones. But there is no evidence supporting either view – there is minimal research on young female offenders. No-one has asked the question as to whether it suits their needs to be with adults – there are no studies that look specifically at the effects of age-mixing on this group.
“The reality can be different from what appears to be the case, and I’ll be asking the young women themselves as to what they see as meeting their needs.”
Sophie says that ‘needs’ is a “slippery word” so she will also be looking at needs as variously defined by the professionals in the field. Her research is not so much to find answers as to “open up a framework to start considering the issues”.
For more information, contact sophie.goldingay@canterbury.ac.nz
