Incarcerated Women’s Voices Need to be Heard (original) (raw)

PRISON AS TEMPORARY REFUGE: AMPLIFYING THE VOICES OF WOMEN DETAINED IN PRISON

British Journal of Criminology, 2020

This article details how a subset of women can perceive of prison as temporary refuge from the hardships and marginalization they face on the outside. It focuses particularly on a group of 88 women incarcerated in western Canada. A large percentage of these women accentuated several reasons why they saw being incarcerated as a desirable alternative to their marginalized situation in their respective communities. These findings nuance our understanding of the place of prison in the lives of these women and draws attention to notable gaps in Canada's often-celebrated social welfare system.

Resistance behind bars: the struggles of incarcerated women

2009

Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women Victoria Law As it examines daily struggles against appalling prison conditions and injustices, this collection of real-life prisoners' stories and analysis of the prison landscape as it is today documents both collective organizing and individual resistance among women incarcerated in the United States. In 1974, women imprisoned at New York's maximum-security prison at Bedford Hills staged what is known as the August Rebellion. Protesting the brutal beating of a fellow prisoner, the women fought off guards, holding seven of them hostage, and took over sections of the prison. While many have heard of the 1971 Attica prison uprising, the August Rebellion remains relatively unknown even in activist circles. Resistance Behind Bars challenges and seeks to change such oversights. Emphasizing women's agency in resisting the conditions of their confinement through forming peer education groups, clandestinely arranging ways for children to visit mothers in distant prisons, and raising public awareness about their lives, the book will spark further discussion and research into the lives of incarcerated women and galvanize much-needed outside support for their struggles. This updated and revised edition includes a new chapter about transgender, transsexual, intersex, and gendervariant people in prison and the specific challenges that they face.

Voices from the Inside: Lived Experiences of Women Confined in a Detention Center

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 2019

Confined in a Detention Center U nder conditions of mass mobility, migration-related detention has become part of a set of border control measures that are implemented in the majority of countries across the world, particularly in the global North (Bosworth 2014; Bosworth and Kellezi 2014). The proliferation of border zones and detention centers-where various categories of people marked as outsiders are confined pending the adjudication of their statusplays a key role in the government of human mobility and in the continuous production of nation-state and citizenship boundaries (Luibhéid 2005). In spite of growing academic interest in the adverse effects of detention and deportation (e.g., Sobhanian et al. 2006; Robjant, Robbins, and Senior 2009), relatively little attention has been paid to the potential relationships between the violence that affects people in their countries of origin and contemporary immigration laws and policies (Lykes and Hershberg 2015). Even less effort has been devoted to understanding how gender and sexualityalong with race, ethnicity, class, nationality, and geopolitics-shape such relationships, playing a role in the production of particular subjects as excludable and deportable (Lewis 2013). As Eithne Luibhéid (2005) clearly notes, multiaxial differentiations that operate through immigration control regimes not only distinguish citizens from noncitizens but also discriminate among noncitizens themselves, stemming from and reinforcing normative power hierarchies. This research was carried out as a part of Francesca Esposito's doctoral thesis, supported by a scholarship from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (SFRH/BD/ 87854/2012). We would like to thank Maayan Ravid, Rimple Mehta, Gaia Giuliani, Simone Tulumello, and Erica Briozzo for their encouragement for this project by offering their time and insightful feedback, as well as Signs's editor and anonymous reviewers who provided critical comments on this article. We also need to thank the organizers and participants of the workshop "Critical Prison Studies, Carceral Ethnography, and Human Rights: From Lived Experience to Global Action," held at the Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law, where we presented an earlier version of this article, for their generous input and comments. Last, and most important, we are grateful to the BeFree team and to the women we met inside Rome's detention center for sharing their stories and struggles with us.

ABSTRACT Title of dissertation: FROM THE INSIDE OUT: WOMEN WRITERS BEHIND PRISON

2014

This dissertation considers what women in prison, or women who have been in prison, have to tell us, in oral testimony or in their writing, about the American “prison experience. ” This study shows how the interpretation of first person prison narratives provides important insights into patterns in the lives of women in their pre-prison, in prison, and post-prison experiences. It also explores the importance that creating narratives has for women prisoners ’ lives. This dissertation examines three kinds of prison narratives. The first involves texts produced and written by female prisoners and prison activists in a radical feminist underground prison newsletter published in Seattle, WA between 1976 and 1987. Secondly, oral narratives by two former prisoners involved in the production of that newsletter are presented. Finally, I discuss and interpret the prison poetry, memoir, and other narratives produced in a creative writing workshop series at the District of Columbia Detention Ce...

Title of dissertation: FROM THE INSIDE OUT: WOMEN WRITERS BEHIND PRISON WALLS

2004

This dissertation considers what women in prison, or women who have been in prison, have to tell us, in oral testimony or in their writing, about the American "prison experience." This study shows how the interpretation of first person prison narratives provides important insights into patterns in the lives of women in their preprison, in prison, and post-prison experiences. It also explores the importance that creating narratives has for women prisoners' lives. This dissertation examines three kinds of prison narratives. The first involves texts produced and written by female prisoners and prison activists in a radical feminist underground prison newsletter published in Seattle, WA between 1976 and 1987. Secondly, oral narratives by two former prisoners involved in the production of that newsletter are presented. Finally, I discuss and interpret the prison poetry, memoir, and other narratives produced in a creative writing workshop series at the District of Columbia Detention Center between 1995 and 1996. Women writers in prison provide insights into situations, such as poverty and abuse, that brought them to prison, they discuss survival strategies in prison, and they offer recommendations 1 The research was facilitated in the early stages by financial support from a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, Institute on Violence, Culture, and Survival, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy, Charlottesville, VA. ii in my darkest hour, for I could never know how hard it was for her to be "still maintaining under the circumstances." For taking the time to recollect their prison experiences and for their commitment to other women prisoners across the country, I thank Jane Potter and Shelly Baker. Thanks too to those associated in the past or

From the INside Out: Women Writers Behind Prison Walls

2004

This dissertation considers what women in prison, or women who have been in prison, have to tell us, in oral testimony or in their writing, about the American "prison experience." This study shows how the interpretation of first person prison narratives provides important insights into patterns in the lives of women in their preprison, in prison, and post-prison experiences. It also explores the importance that creating narratives has for women prisoners' lives. This dissertation examines three kinds of prison narratives. The first involves texts produced and written by female prisoners and prison activists in a radical feminist underground prison newsletter published in Seattle, WA between 1976 and 1987. Secondly, oral narratives by two former prisoners involved in the production of that newsletter are presented. Finally, I discuss and interpret the prison poetry, memoir, and other narratives produced in a creative writing workshop series at the District of Columbia Detention Center between 1995 and 1996. Women writers in prison provide insights into situations, such as poverty and abuse, that brought them to prison, they discuss survival strategies in prison, and they offer recommendations 1 The research was facilitated in the early stages by financial support from a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, Institute on Violence, Culture, and Survival, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy, Charlottesville, VA. ii in my darkest hour, for I could never know how hard it was for her to be "still maintaining under the circumstances." For taking the time to recollect their prison experiences and for their commitment to other women prisoners across the country, I thank Jane Potter and Shelly Baker. Thanks too to those associated in the past or