What stressors exist for incarcerated women - Essay Example

Religious groups have shown constant and persistent interest in working with the incarcerated people in jail to help bring about their rehabilitation. Evidently, this is evident as many terms that are currently associated with the prisons came about from the efforts made by the people of faith in the 18th century. These are terms like the reformatory, rehabilitation and the penitentiary. This was in an effort to ensure that the inmates fully reformed while serving their jail term (Lazzari, 2005).

The faith-based organizations provide in-house ministries, mentorship of the inmates, bible studies and even preparing the inmates for their release. However, these faith-based organizations require volunteer ship and participation from the inmates. A study by Camp and Associates in 2006; however, revealed that females, blacks and Hispanics were less likely to volunteer in these organizations. Evidently, this is because of many challenges and stresses that these women undergo. Incarcerated women faced a lot of challenges and stresses during their imprisonment period.

These challenges range from both physical and mental stresses. Evidently, women conditions and life at the prisons were characterized by unsafe environments, which ranged from lack of proper sanitation facilities. The prisons had inadequate or very few sewage and bathing facilities and systems (Cobbina, 2010). The incarceration period was also greatly marred with hard physical labor and in most cases; the women oversaw corporal punishment. In addition to this, there was no medical care for the offenders who posed a great risk and worried mostly to the pregnant offenders.

The women with mental health problems were held in a solitary confinement something that posed a great stress to the offenders (Lazzari, 2005). To help the women deal with these problems, the authors stress on the need of the use of faith based organizations. The faith-based programs are seen to