Elizabeth Rivard wants to change the criminal justice system, and she’s starting to through her research on the significant others of incarcerated women.
Rivard, a second-year justice and social inquiry master’s student in the School of Social Transformation, is specifically looking at incarceration’s unintended consequences on women’s significant others.
“I got interested in [the research] because I don’t like the way the criminal justice system works,” she said.
Currently, there is more research focusing on the collateral consequences on the children of those who are incarcerated.
“As far as my review of the literature has gone, there’s nothing on partners of incarcerated women,” Rivard said.
There isn’t this type of research on same-sex partners of incarcerated men or women, so Rivard said she is interested in working on that aspect if the opportunity arises.
For partners of incarcerated women, Rivard said it seems their relationships weren’t bad before the incarceration, and many of the women were incarcerated because of financial crimes rather than violent or drug crimes.
“It seems like the men are doing better than the women,” Rivard said, referring to the partners of incarcerated women and men.
This is because, in studies on partners of incarcerated men, there tends to be more oppression toward these female partners before and during the incarceration.
Examples of oppression include the men being more involved in drugs and violent crimes before their incarceration, which puts the partners in a bad environment.
Men also attempt to maintain control over their wives or partners during incarceration and there can be negative financial consequences for the wives and partners, because they are often out of work.
“Their husbands would basically guilt them into staying home at all times, waiting for their calls, so they could monitor their wives,” Rivard said. “A lot of times [the wives] would be accused of cheating and being unfaithful.”
Overwhelmingly, she said the male partners of incarcerated women show less control issues and different consequences of the incarceration.
“They miss their wives a lot,” Rivard said.
Although this is a small study with only six interviews so far, Rivard said she’s found that the partners of the incarcerated women are more concerned about their role as providers.
“These men feel like they have to make sure that they send enough money so their wives can buy stuff at the prison store,” Rivard said.
The partners also often harbor anger toward the system.
“The frustrations they have are more at the lack of being able to get answers,” Rivard said.
For example, sometimes significant others don’t hear back quickly about their visitation rights from the prison.
Other visitation issues include limits on physical affection because of security.
“It’s very restrictive, and it’s hard to keep a relationship going,” Rivard said.
This policy probably won’t change because of security issues, but partners say this is one of the hardest parts to deal with.
Transportation issues are one area that could change when it comes to incarceration, because many prisons are in inconvenient locations, Rivard said.
“It’s been shown that if you have close family ties when you’re incarcerated, the recidivism rates or likeliness of going back to prison are reduced,” she said.
Overall, Rivard said she’s been able to verify what she already knows about gender roles and the effects of incarceration on partners.
“Being incarcerated is difficult, and it is hard on those loved ones that surround you,” Rivard said.
John Johnson, a justice studies professor in the School of Social Transformation, is an adviser and committee member for Rivard.
“No one I know of has specifically concentrated on the impact on relationships when the woman is the one incarcerated,” Johnson said.
The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, with about 3 million people in jail and prison, he said.
“Roughly 90 percent of them are males, but the percentage of females has been going up in recent years,” Johnson said. “I suppose that’s one reason why the studies have tended to concentrate on male incarceration in the past.”
Rivard’s study is an exploratory study and the goal is not to generate a representative sample, he said, and there were also the issues of recruiting males and not having official support.
“It’s a significant finding that it’s difficult to make contact with males and to set up interviews with males,” Johnson said.
Rivard said finding the study participants on her own was difficult, because she doesn’t work with the Arizona Department of Corrections.
Doris Marie Provine, an adviser and committee member to Rivard, said Rivard has been very persistent about her research.
“It’s a difficult project because she has to work hard to get access to people for her study,” Provine said.
Reach the reporter at reweaver@asu.edu
