The Imprisonment of Women

Mahan, Sue; Dobash, R P.; Dobash, R. Emerson; Gutteridge, Sue

doi:10.2307/1143482

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Dobash et al argued that a consequence of this greater management for the purpose of moral reclamation was the more rigorous enforcement of discipline upon female convicts. 8 While acknowledging the important role of male beliefs about respectability in shaping penal systems for women, Forsythe countered that the difference in treatment based upon sex was less pronounced than Zedner had suggested, and refuted the assertion made by Dobash et al that female prisoners were punished with greater severity and frequency than their male counterparts. 9 Recent exploration of the female convict estate in the 1850s and 1860s has questioned how notions of ideal femininity impacted upon debates about the management of health and discipline.…”

Section: Raising Their Nature and Habits? Prison Education For Womenmentioning

confidence: 97%

3 Mothering in a carceral space

Bennett

2024

Motherhood Confined

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In her 1864 work Our Convicts, educational and penal reformer Mary Carpenter wrote at length about the incalculable benefit of a good mother's influence upon her child's development. However, she warned, 'no one can estimate the evil which is caused to society, both directly and indirectly, by a wicked one'. 1 When the modern prison system was created in the mid-nineteenth century, motherhood had emerged as a dominant social construct and concern in Victorian England, with the question of what made a 'good mother' prompting debate and scrutiny within medical, social and government discourse. Using the prison as its setting, this chapter advances our understanding of the shifting views about, and expectations placed upon, mothers between the mid-nineteenth and the mid-twentieth century. It uncovers the efforts made to educate female prisoners in domesticity and mothercraft and to use this instruction as a reformative tool.Throughout this period, women, particularly mothers, who committed crimes were subject to especial censure. Female criminality was believed to be symptomatic of a woman's lack of domesticity and their straying beyond the bounds of ideal femininity, but was also posited as a threat to the fabric of family life. The opening section of this chapter explores debates about using prison as a place to address these issues. Zedner highlighted the contradictions with regard to how broader societal views about female criminals impacted upon their treatment in prison, and stated that 'women were described as being both incapable of moral judgement and yet at the same time as morally degraded, as being shameless and yet desperate for self-respect'. 2 Late nineteenth-and early twentiethcentury periodicals and commentaries on crime, its causes and its suppression were saturated with tales of fallen women, and of children

show abstract

Section: Raising Their Nature and Habits? Prison Education For Womenmentioning

confidence: 97%

3 Mothering in a carceral space

Bennett

2024

Motherhood Confined

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Ultimately, in the early 20 th century, this led to the establishment of several reformatories in, for example, the Anglo-American context (Dobash et al, 1986;Freedman, 1984;Hannah-Moffat, 2001), France (Bosworth, 2000), and Germany (Gélieu, 2014;Hackl, 2016;Leukel, 2014). These correctional facilities now aimed at reforming prisoners with the help of medical and psychological expertise and sex-stereotyped programs according to the middleclass ideal of "womanhood" (Dobash et al, 1986;Hannah-Moffat, 2001;Rafter, 1983). Thus, the notion of a women-specific prison continued to nurture the ideology of innate sexual differences between male and female offenders and corresponding dual standards of treatment (Freedman, 1984).…”

Section: Female Figures Of Crime In the History Of Women's Prisons' R...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Just Prison? Women’s Prison Reform and the Figure of the “Offender-as-Victim” in Germany

Faust,

Nagel

2024

SSJ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

During the 1990s, the Berlin women’s prison was reformed to do justice to female inmates. This redesigning of space and programs was intended to meet women-specific conditions and needs. The present paper engages with this prison reform as transformation in the name of gender justice. Based on interviews with prison reformers, criminologists, and policymakers, as well as on the analysis of historical documents, we illuminate how a specific figure of the “criminalized woman” helps to translate the abstract notion of social justice into situated practice. From the 1970s onward, a new knowledge of women’s crime would emerge: it constituted female offenders as victims of patriarchal oppression and victimization, allowing the prison system to be criticized as androcentric and discriminatory against women. We argue that subsequent reform pursued gender justice in the form of difference-based, gender-responsive programs and spaces targeting individual inmates’ character and mindset. Thereby, the reformers’ initial critique of social justice would be unintentionally depoliticized and so gender, economic, and political inequalities remained unaddressed. Our purpose is hence twofold: first, to review the recent history of women’s incarceration in Germany, and second, to add a social justice focus to the international criminological debate on gender, prison, and reform.

show abstract

“…68 Historians of crime including Dobash and others have since gathered more evidence of the circumstances from which women came and found that the majority of the women convicted of theft had largely stolen clothes, food and household provisions such as coal. 69 Shortly after Westminster's redesignation in 1850, due to the large numbers of committals of women with babies and young children Governor Tracey asked permission from the Visiting Justices to adapt part of the prison into a nursery to tend to their 'peculiar treatment and wants'. An average of between twenty-five and thirty were committed each quarter, and Tracey added that he expected a considerable increase as the winter advanced.…”

Section: A Delicate and Worn-out Constitution: Women Entering The Pri...mentioning

confidence: 99%

1 Contesting women’s health in the prison system

Bennett

2024

Motherhood Confined

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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

show abstract

The Imprisonment of Women

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

3 Mothering in a carceral space

3 Mothering in a carceral space

The Just Prison? Women’s Prison Reform and the Figure of the “Offender-as-Victim” in Germany

1 Contesting women’s health in the prison system

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About