Strategizing and Fatalizing: Self and Other in the Trauma Narratives of Justice-Involved Women

Abstract

Jail admissions in the United States number nearly 1 million women annually. Many have limited access to public support and must seek assistance from family, friends, and strangers to maintain health and safety after release. This study sought to learn more about how women with a history of interpersonal trauma and criminal justice involvement perceive and manage social relationships. In-depth, story-eliciting interviews were conducted over 12 months with 10 participants who were selected from the convenience sample of an ongoing parent study in a Midwestern urban jail. Embedded trauma narratives were analyzed for self-presentation, form, and theme. The trauma narratives registered a continuum of agency, anchored at either end by patterns of strategizing talk and fatalizing talk. Providers and advocates can improve support for justice-involved women post incarceration by becoming familiar with and responding to patterns of strategizing and fatalizing in their personal narratives.

Holistic Conceptualizations of Health by Incarcerated Aboriginal Women in New South Wales, Australia

“…Rates of IGT are particularly high and associated with other mental health disorders (Barrett, Teesson, & Mills, 2014; Dudgeon, Wright, Paradies, Garvey, & Walker, 2014; Heffernan, Andersen, Davidson, & Kinner, 2015b; McKendrick, Brooks, Hudson, Thorpe, & Bennett, 2018). Trauma is a significant issue affecting the health of incarcerated women internationally (DeHart, 2008; Douglas & Plugge, 2008; Emerson, 2018; Grella, Lovinger, & Warda, 2013; Harner & Burgess, 2011; Harner & Riley, 2013; Lynch et al, 2014; Lynch, Fritch, & Heath, 2012; McGlue, 2016). However, mental health issues experienced by Aboriginal women occur in a context of life-span, historical and ongoing IGT, and loss sustained by racism, discrimination, and socioeconomic and political inequities (Atkinson, Nelson, Brooks, Atkinson, & Ryan, 2014; Carlton & Segrave, 2014; Dudgeon et al, 2014; Heffernan et al, 2009; Jones & Day, 2011; Kariminia, Butler, & Levy, 2007; Lawrie, 2003; Parker & Milroy, 2014; Wilson et al, 2017).…”

Narrative Inquiry Into Shelter-Seeking by Women With a History of Repeated Incarceration

“…Where, how, with whom, and with what result housing occurred commanded a great deal of the women’s storytelling attention and energy. The embedded housing narratives, similar to the embedded trauma narratives on which I have reported elsewhere 38 were also notably linked in the stories to women’s thoughts on health and safety.…”

A phenomenological reflection on women's lived experience of giving in circumstances of material scarcity

“…The ethnographic sample was purposefully selected by the study team based on the richness and detail of women's input about barriers and facilitators to cervical and other health during the small group sessions of the intervention portion of the study. We conducted two indepth, open-ended interviews with 10 of women and less formal interviews and field observations with all 15 to learn more about how they perceived and navigated barriers to health care and managed diverse forms of interpersonal, institutional, and social support (Emerson, 2018a(Emerson, , 2018b. Participants were informed of the benefits and risks of participating in the research and gave written informed consent for interviews and their use in subsequent publications.…”

“…Detail about the sampling and sample, data collection, the intervention and underlying theory, and human subjects protections can be found in Ramaswamy et al (2017) and Emerson et al (2019). Particular treatment of the ethnographic sample and methods appears in Emerson (2018aEmerson ( , 2018b.…”