Delinquent Girls as Activists: Insider Activism and Carceral Welfare

Abstract

The article examines the motivation and role of the insider activism that resulted in the preservation of a major historical site of female incarceration, the Parramatta Female Factory Precinct, in suburban Sydney. For much of the 20th century the site was a “Girls’ Home,” in which children who had committed no offense were incarcerated under child welfare regulations and literally treated like criminals. Life in the institution was characterized by routine extreme maltreatment of children, many of whom have carried the psychological legacy of their time there throughout their lives. A group of survivors, moved to preserve and reclaim the space, spent many years contending with obdurate and indifferent bureaucracies before successfully having the site Heritage-listed, and it is now a member of the international Sites of Conscience. The Precinct’s significance as a site of feminist carceral history is discussed, and its place in today’s cultural landscape examined.

Sites of conscience redressing disability institutional violence

“…Sites of conscience practices have also been utilised across a range of penal and welfare institutions (in which disabled people have been confined alongside other marginalised populations as part of broader settler colonial and eugenics logics). Through PFFP Project, former residents of the Parramatta Girls' Home ('Parragirls') utilise art and social history to connect their memories and experiences to contemporary debates about institutionalisation in Australia (Hibberd & Djuric, 2019;Steele et al, 2020;Wilson & Carlton, 2022). The Parramatta Female Factory Precinct site has been used for a variety of other penal and welfare purposes, including a mental hospital (to which some former residents of PMIH were moved, as earlier discussed).…”