Gender Responsive Training

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Data collected by the Sentencing Project (Zeng, 2022) (Kaeble, 2023) (Gender-Responsive Policy Development in Corrections: What We Know and Roadmaps for Change)[1] reveals that between 1980 and 2019, the number of incarcerated women in jails and prison increased by more than 700%, rising from a total of 26,378 in 1980 to 222,455 in 2019. As the number of women involved in the criminal justice system continues to grow and out pace that of men, the need to understand and apply gender-responsive strategies is needed more now than ever before. Gender responsiveness is based on the characteristics of justice-involved women, how they differ from justice-involved men, and how the system should respond to them differently. By no means does being gender responsive substitute for accountability or the safety of an institution or a community corrections office, yet it looks at the reasons why women enter the criminal justice system and how the system can respond differently to gain better outcomes not only for the justice-involved women but for the staff as well. While staff training is a vital component to the operation of any facility or community corrections office, gender-responsive training has not taken hold across the country. Decreasing budgets and staffing shortages have left agencies scrambling to get new hires into their open positions, retain the current staff they have, and continue with the required basic training. It has become apparent that gender-responsive training is not considered a requirement for basic training. NIC is seeking to develop a gender-responsive basic training to give the country’s correctional agencies an additional resource to assist them with the increasing number of women involved with the criminal justice system. 1.     Carson, E.A. (2022). Prisoners in 2021 – Statistical Tables. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics; Zeng, Z. (2022) Jail Inmates in 2021 – Statistical Tables. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics; Kaeble, D. (2023). Probation and Parole in the United States, 2021. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics.[1] 2.     Gender-Responsive Policy Development in Corrections: What We Know and Roadmaps for Change | National Institute of Corrections (nicic.gov)

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