Planning While Inside: Desistance and Recovery

Criminalized women have high rates of substance use, which are often related to their criminal activity. This chapter explores how women think about the impacts of prison on substance use and their journeys to recovery. Some women share that prison can be helpful in their recovery, seeing prison as a proxy detox. Women interviewed see their substance use as something out of their control, and thus, prison provides the structure to remove themselves from their substance use. I find that women interviewed for the study see recovery from addiction and the process of desistance as the same journey. Meaning that when they refrain from substance use, criminal activity will cease.