1 Contesting women’s health in the prison system

Abstract

Prison reformer Mary Carpenter encapsulated a difficulty that has long faced the justice system when confining women, labelling it as 'a subject of great importance and of peculiar difficulty'. 1 When they walked through the prison gates women brought with them a skein of stories and experiences. Some entered prison to serve a sentence of a few days. Others faced several years behind bars. Prisons for women accommodated the young and the old; the healthy alongside the sick; the first-time offender entering prison with trepidation, along with the recidivist, perceived to be hardened to the toils of incarceration. Some women began and ended their prison sentences without family, friends or character. Some began their sentence pregnant, hundreds of others left children and lives on the outside. Historically, mothers in prison have been doubly ostracised by society for their criminal behaviour and for their seeming failure as mothers, exacerbating the impact of the separation from their children. 2 This chapter demonstrates that for each one of them, their experiences of health and discipline were heavily regulated -yet often contested -by those tasked with their custody and care.Exploring the creation of female prisons and female-only sections in mixed prisons in the mid-nineteenth century, this chapter argues that the physical prison spaces and penal regimes established in these institutions were designed by male prison administrators with the containment of men in mind. It uncovers the ongoing tensions in the century that followed between policy and practice when women were subjected to these regimes, exploring the equally problematic, but underexplored, question of providing for women's health behind bars. The chapter identifies chains of formal and informal decisionmaking processes that sometimes conflicted with prison policy and