Advancing Corrections Journal - Edition #20 - Scholarly Reflections on Core Considerations for Correctional Practice | Article 17 (ACJ20-A017)

 

The gender-responsive paradigm has driven the evolution of trauma-informed practice in corrections in numerous ways. Over the past two decades, reforms first designed to improve the treatment of justice-involved women have reshaped global correctional policy, exemplified by the influence of the United Nations Bangkok Rules on the later Mandela Rules. Gender-responsive research and practice reframed trauma from an individual problem to a systemic concern, providing correctional agencies with the tools and confidence to assess and address its effects safely. The development of the Women’s Risk Needs Assessment, the Women’s Correctional Safety Scales, and treatment curricula designed for women advanced this agenda, embedding trauma awareness into assessment and daily operations. Early attention to women’s trauma—particularly gender-based and childhood violence—was both strategic and ethical, yielding theoretical and practical insights that now inform work with men. Additionally, the field’s historic focus on risk reduction arguably obscured the centrality of trauma in pathways to offending for both genders. The commentary concludes with reflections on the new development of the Men’s Risk Needs Assessment (MRNA), which extends gender-responsive insights to male populations, emphasizing trauma, health, and desistance as essential to rehabilitation. The MRNA reflects a growing recognition that gender-responsive and trauma-informed frameworks are mutually reinforcing and capable of transforming correctional policy and practice for all justice-involved individuals.

 

Keywords: trauma-informed practices; gender-responsive

 

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