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International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology
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Female Repeat Offenders Negotiating Identity

Brenda Geiger

Department of Criminology Bar-Ilan University, Western Galilee Campus

Michael Fischer

Justice Studies, Russ Hall Pittsburg State University

This study examines the process of identity negotiation for Israeli female ex-convicts who were separated for extensive periods of time from their children and eventually lost custody over them. The content analysis of in-depth interviews reveals that these women were able to reconstruct their biographies and retrospectively account for their crimes and drug addiction in terms of the sexual, physical, and economic abuse they had endured and by appeal to higher loyalties, their children who they had to provide for. However, when having to account for their failings as mothers, all biographical reconstruction, external blame, and accusation collapsed. Looking at themselves through their children's eyes, female offenders were simply unable to renegotiate the imputed identity of incompetent mother. They could neither confront their children's anger nor explain to them why they had abandoned them. Permanently alienated from the center of motherhood, these women were doomed to an existential chaos.

Key Words: imprisoned mothers • female offenders • identity negotiation • accounts • rehabilitation

International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, Vol. 47, No. 5, 496-515 (2003)
DOI: 10.1177/0306624X03253025
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