Psychological Characteristics of Convicted Pregnant Women

Abstract

The work is focused on revealing psychological characteristics of pregnant women con-demned to prison sentence. Among other things, we studied their attitudes towards their pregnancy, the coming child, mother’s role and motherhood in general. The materials pre-sented are from an empirical study we carried out in 2020 on a sample of 72 pregnant women serving their prison sentences in penal colonies and open prisons of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia. Social and demographic as well as criminological parame-ters were studied along with their relationship with characteristics found through psycho-logical methodologies. A questionnaire was used which reflected the respondents’ socio-demographic characteristics. The data related to their criminal-law and correctional charac-teristics were filled in by the personnel in the questionnaire Characteristics of Convicted Pregnant Women. The psychological aspect was studied using the following: 1) Maternal-Foetal Attachment Scale by J. T. Condon; 2) Test of a Pregnant Woman’s Attitudes by I.V. Dobryakov; 3) Methodology for Diagnostics of Psychic States by H.J. Eysenck; 4) My Pregnancy questionnaire; 5) “My Child and I” drawing test by G.G. Filippova. As the re-sults of the study suggest, a pregnant woman can be put into one of three groups needing a specific approach for their prenatal preparation.

Keywords

• convicted women
• penal correction system
• psychological work with convicts
• social and demographic param-eters
• criminological parameters
• psychological characteristics
• mother’s role
• experiencing one’s pregnancy
• gestational dominant