CJPE summer course: She Matters: Gender specific approaches to Women in Criminal Justice Settings

The criminal justice landscape designed by and for men often lacks appropriate attention to women and girls. From institutional infrastructure to risk-assessment tools, the system often defaults to a “male standard,” resulting in a profound lack of agency for female clients. Too often, women’s needs and choices are disregarded, their voices are sidelined, and their specific life contexts – such as caregiving and survival-linked offending –  are ignored in favour of rigid compliance. Many women and girls enter the system with histories of specific types trauma (domestic abuse, sexual violence, or economic coercion). Separation from children is a primary source of distress in detention, while probation requirements often conflict with caregiving duties. Women are often “protected” from participating in their own reintegration or in a restorative justice process in ways that actually deny them agency over their own responsibility-taking and justice needs.

This Summer Course seeks to challenge existing structures and empower professionals to recognise women and girls as active participants in their own journeys of change. The course will explore how “risk” is often relational – connected to partners or family stress – and why supervision must shift from “monitoring behaviour” to “supporting safety and stability.” It will examine how to build trauma-informed and gender-responsive regimes that support family bonds rather than penalising women for their domestic responsibilities. Attendees will explore restorative reentry models that prioritise accountability and repair, moving beyond simple risk management to foster genuine social reintegration.