Kathy Kendall and other authors have also demonstrated that "women are more likely than men to be punished for trivial actions such as a lack of deference to authority and insubordination" and "prison aggression will only be effectively addressed by focussing on the regime rather than the prisoners themselves." For instance, Kendall asserts that "many programs constructed to address women's anger and/or aggression actually serve[s] the immediate goal of institutional management rather than assisting women in the long-term" (37-38). She then proceeds to discuss the "thwarting effects of the coercive environment." In fact, she concludes that institutional programming may contribute to the further oppression of women by focussing upon individual rather than structural and systemic issues. Ms. Kendall also encourages participants to situate their anger within the historical context to "challenge the dominant discourse ... and resist further oppression."

In addition, as Tim Brennan and James Austin found, "incarcerated women differ from male inmates in their behaviours and special needs – especially with regard to medical and mental health needs and family attributes ... many practitioners feel that current systems over classify and incorrectly house female inmates.... For inmates, classification can govern eligibility and access to programs, housing assignments, selection of cell mates, personal safety, eligibility for work status, consistency, fairness and equity while in jail" (2).

They also point out that "the most serious charge against gender-neutral classification tools is that they over classify female inmates ... because women's violence does not take into account two qualifying factors. First, women with violent offenses are often accessories and not leaders or instigators. Second, a large percentage of female violence occurs in long-term relationships, which is unlikely generalized to the public at large.... A key deficiency of risk-based jail classification systems is that the risk factors have inadequate predictive validly.... Thus, from a scientific perspective, initial risk-based classifications are arguably inapplicable to women since they fail their most fundamental task, which is risk prediction" (11). Without a doubt, the applicability of these same risk assessment schemes to youth is, at best, equally inappropriate and, at worst, incredibly damaging.

Finally, these authors have developed guidelines for designing "objective classification systems." They have proposed the following steps:

1. Obtain the support and commitment from agency management.
2. Establish an implementation team of key stakeholders.
3. Establish performance requirement, goals , and purposes.
4. Finalize a provision technical design that specifies classification goals, purposes and organizing principles, identifies key risk and needs factors, and selects a classification scoring format.
5. Conduct a pilot test and validation study.
6. Finalize the classification systems.
7. Implement the classification system.
8. Evaluate, monitor and revise the system based on the reality that classification systems are dynamic procedures that progressively evolve as new findings, experiences, and conditions emerge.