Their Sisters' Keepers

Socio-Economic And Psychological Perspectives Of Female Crimes

“…16 Freedman (1981) in "Their Sister's Keepers" suggests that the growing rate of women in prison between 1815 and 1860 can be linked to social change, especially urbanisation, and new agents of social control such as urban police and moral reformers. Under these influences, not only serious crimes against persons or property, but unlawful personaldrunkenness' idle and disorderly conduct and vagrancy brought the majority of criminals of both sexes into the courts and prisons (Freedman 1981). 17 She points out that fewer job opportunities and lower wages for women resulted in economic marginalization and increased the need for women to resort to crimes such as prostitution, especially during wars when men were not able to support their families.…”

“Women's Prisons” and “Men's Prisons”: Should Prisoners Be Classified by Sex?

“…prisoners were not classified by sex-or, in most instances, by other criteria-and were not housed in separate facilities. However, with the advent of the prison reform movements of the nineteenth century, women's institutions were created (Barrows, 1910;Freedman, 1981 1. The articulated rationale was the protection of women, and the reform was greeted with praise.…”

Embodied Surveillance And The Gendering Of Punishment

“…The purpose of disciplining the bodies of women in the reformatory system was not for work in the paid labor market but for reproductive labor in the domestic sphere (Rafter 1995;Freedman 1981;Feinman 1984). However, it was not only the case that institutions prepared men and women for different kinds of labor and, therefore, set them up to have different relations to the political economy.…”

“…While Rafter (1995) and Freedman (1981) have made notable contributions through their analyses of the emergence of sex-segregated punishment and the birth of women's reformatories, discursive constructions of punishment, surveillance, resistance, and control within mainstream criminology remain premised on studies of men in maledominated prisons, jails, and penitentiaries. The failure to include analyses of the practices, policies, and politics within women's prisons suggests that prominent theories and conceptualizations of punishment are partial, incomplete, and occlusive.…”