‘IncarcHERated’: An In-depth Analysis of Women’s Incarceration and Prison Policies

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Male-centric prison policies promote the marginalization of women prisoners where prison facilities deem them victims to stereotypical notions of the ideal woman. In cases where social rules are not adhered to, women experience exacerbated pains of punishment, such as psychological and physical trauma induced through violent strip searches often carried out by male officers. This alerts us to question how societal perceptions and correctional policies impact the way women are treated within a penal system that subordinates them. Hence, this article will discuss how societal perceptions and correctional policies are premised on patriarchal structures of justice and how it contributes to the maintenance of the subordination of women. It will then examine how the majority of women’s incarceration and criminal activity can be attributed to the effects of patriarchal domination.

Women and Crime

Women often occupy inferior positions within the carceral system, where their unique requirements go unaddressed. In contrast to men, women have been empirically proven to commit less violent crimes and minimally contribute to criminality rates as they are typically incarcerated for moral issues and low-level crimes. Such crimes include disrespecting societal expectations and rules, namely, abortion or prostitution, often driven by factors including economic insecurity. However, the relative triviality of the crime’s women engage in, juxtaposes the egregious manner they are treated within correctional facilities. As such, carceral systems represent a patriarchal standard where women are coerced to conform to norms that underpin sexist policies.

Societal Perceptions of Gender

Women offenders stay away from the typical definitions of the hegemonic female ideal and hence, are treated accordingly. This is due to differing foundational experiences and reproductive conceptions that work to ingrain their duty to reproduce, upholding outdated sexist ideologies. These societal conceptions and one’s subsequent failure to meet them drive women to commit lower-echelon crimes, such as micro-distributers of drugs. Certain events, such as the war on drugs in Latin America, increase women’s criminalization and incarceration for small-scale drug trafficking where the severity of their crimes does not align with their prison experiences. For instance, Argentinian prisons demonstrate this phenomenon as most women inmates are often charged with drug-related charges but are treated as though they have committed harsh crimes.

Moreover, broader societal perceptions inform gendered behavioural characteristics of inmates, particularly where women are viewed as weak and vulnerable and men are encouraged to demonstrate stoic and violent characteristics. As such, women face harsher punitive penal sanctions as gender, race, and class intersect to negatively skew perceptions of women within the collective imaginary. The collective imaginary informs how incarcerated women are labelled as deviant moral failures, resulting in a ‘double stigmatisation’ for breaking the morally binding contract of law and distancing oneself from the ‘social contract.’ Diminishing the importance of mitigating factors of women’s criminality weaponizes their environment to shame them for failing to successfully act as an ‘ideal woman.’

Prison Policies

These societal perceptions are embedded within prison policies where draconian carceral practices operate to exacerbate social and gender inequality, class structures, and poverty. Women’s incarceration was previously aimed at reforming women through feminized social control, which included providing domestic training and maternal guidance to ensure women became more disciplined to fulfill their duties as wives and mothers. These reforming tactics comprise of misogynistic mothering policies that relegate mothers to raise their children in prison environments in the name of maintaining a biological bond.

These mothering policies further translate into shackling practices where women, even when pregnant, are chained from their feet, hands and waist while transported to local hospitals. Due to the lack of obstetrics care in prisons, women are transported from their cells to local community clinics or hospitals for prenatal care, labour, and delivery. This unethical practice of shackling hinders doctors’ ability to adequately provide care to women in labour as they cannot easily change women’s positions or prep them for emergency c-sections. These practices demonstrate the invisibilisation of women offenders and how their unique requirements and need for healthcare are distorted. Shackling policies are often justified on the grounds of preventing escape or violence, however, they fail to account that women tend to commit less complex and violent crimes and thus, are less likely to escape. Shackling policies not only juxtapose carceral mothering policies as they are seen as essential but also contradict the importance of women and their children’s health.

Prison For Women (P4W)

For women, the existing “appalling conditions and violence that state workers exercise” are exacerbated, particularly during incarceration and its processes. One example where harmful prison environments and expectations of women are translated into sexist carceral policies is through the P4W in Ontario, Canada. The P4W was designed to operate upon male-centric ideals and policies disguised as a prison dedicated to women. The P4W’s foundational male-focused policies and invisibilisation of women’s requirements are egregious violations of women’s rights, namely through the mandatory motherhood programs and violent strip searches performed by male guards. These “terrifying and humiliating experience[s]” left many women traumatized as they starkly illustrated an excessive use of force and oppression. Despite the increasing number of policies geared toward women, a lack of women-centered programs and healthcare that adequately aid women is marginal.

Conclusion

Overall, punitive penal controls socially perpetuate the notion of the ideal woman that is replicated through carceral systems and their governing policies. The oppression of women offenders arises from societal perceptions and expectations of women and reductive ideologies of how they should behave and be punished. If women fail to meet the expected norms, they are deemed moral failures and in need of reform. These expectations are translated into correctional policies that aim to maintain the relegation of women as second-class citizens, specifically through mothering and shackling policies. The impact of these policies is observed through the infamous P4W, which refused to account for women’s requirements and instead operated upon male-centric procedures. Ultimately, societal perceptions and sexist correctional policies work to subordinate women and maintain their secondary status.

Author Bio:

Daniella Ekmejian is studying MPhil in Criminology at the University of Cambridge.