Continuing the Journey: Stigma and Women’s Desistance

Criminalized women face multiple stigmas impacting their lives and ability to desist in profound ways. In this chapter, I explore formerly incarcerated women’s experiences of intersecting stigmas and how they impact their ability to access services. Women feel discriminated against and thus have difficulties accessing essential needs such as housing and employment. Further, they feel stigma impacts when accessing health care services. Women internalize such experiences and stigma, resulting in feeling undeserving of the support and services available to them. The desistance process is relational, meaning that desisters need people in their corner to support them. Desistance, therefore, needs to be seen as a community’s journey alongside the desister, providing needed support and feedback. Strategies of love, compassion, and support must replace surveillance, punishment, and prison.