ABSTRACT
Minority groups continue to be over represented in the criminal justice system. This chapter explores the concerns of Indigenous and minority women preparing for release and what they said about approaches to helping women adjust to life after prison. While reliant on such services for support, neither group found these particularly helpful, either because they did not adequately address the returning and ongoing living circumstances for women or because of service structures and time frames. While these remain unaddressed, women are at increased risk of reincarceration. Indigenous women offenders in Queensland identified as treatment needs the same issues as the women in Hawaii, reporting life histories of childhood and family trauma, abuse and neglect as drivers of their offending. In terms of a risk need -responsivity approach, what is distinctive about the needs of Indigenous women must be addressed in the design of programmes for offenders, combining cultural understandings with contemporary evidenced-based interventions.
