P a g e The Layered Impact of Imprisonment upon Female Prisoners in Northern Ireland Contents (original) (raw)
Related papers
Chapter 1- Research for Women in Prison
Research for Women in Prison
The book has been designed with 7 interconnecting chapters. These chapters relate to a section of the website and link with separate areas where charities or universities work. The purpose of this book is to be read as a stand-alone book, become part of a criminology degree curriculum or used by practitioners or prisoners. Chapter 1 - History/ Feminism/ Prison Reform vs Abolition Chapter 2 – Around the World – Data and Case Studies Chapter 3 – Human Rights and Violations, including Solitary Confinement Chapter 4 - Legal Issues – including sentencing, Brexit, Chapter 5 – Supporting Women – information about health, substance abuse, mental health Chapter 6 – Family Matters – visits, pregnancy, mothers and other family members Chapter 7 –Resettlement, Employability, Future Directions There is a huge gap in the current market for information that is readable, usable and in one place about women, their rights and the support they need when they are involved with the Criminal Justice system.
Critical Criminology, 2017
At the outset of their book, In Search of Safety: Confronting Inequality in Women's Imprisonment, the authors (Barbara Owen, James Wells and Jocelyn Pollock) correctly point out that, ''When most people think about prison, they think about men'' (p. 1). This is due, in large part, to the fact that men make up the bulk of the world's prison population. Of course, too, with some exception, the popular media focuses primarily on males behind bars, which is another contributing factor. Yet, criminology must also be held partially responsible because most of the scholarly books and journal articles on incarceration produced by our colleagues conspicuously overlook the plight of women behind bars. Thus, Owen, Wells and Pollock's scholarly monograph is a much-needed major contribution to the field. Guided by the concepts of pathways, gender-inequality, intersectionality, community, capital, prison culture, human rights, and state-sponsored suffering, the authors attempt to describe women's prison experiences. Owen and her co-authors devote special attention to documenting how female inmates handle challenges to their safety by developing various forms of prison capital. The authors define capital as: any type of resource, or access to a desired resource, that can keep a woman safe while she does her time. In addition to prison forms of social capital (who you know) and human capital (what you know), other specific expressions of cultural, emotional, and economic capital provide the foundation for the search for safety as women do their time (p. 2). Theoretically and conceptually sophisticated, this book presents important data on searching for safety through prison capital and other issues derived from mixed methods, including prisoner and correctional staff focus groups, staff interviews, content analysis of
Overcoming the rocky terrain to research women in prison
Session 3: workshop 2. Collaboration has importance for improving health, social and welfare support for women in prison. In order to explore how women who self- harm or have other intersec ng issues can be supported using evidence from research, this workshop will explore four challenges relevant to researchers, prac oners and policy-makers. The four themes will be: access to research; jus ca ons for research; therapeu c applica on of legisla on; future research direc ons.
A qualitative anaysis of womens' experiences before, during and after imprisonment in South Africa
2014
The purpose of this thesis is to examine the experiences of South African women prior to, during and after incarceration. The theoretical bases for this study include the general strain theory (GST), feminist pathways approach and Goffman's "total institutions". The study made use of a qualitative research design. In-depth interviews were conducted with a total of twenty female ex-prisoners, who were selected using snowball sampling, to obtain information about their experiences during the periods indicated. The findings of the study indicated that, in respect of the three periods mentioned, the participants cited their experiences during incarceration as the most prominent as they tended to dwell more on this phase of their lives than any other phase. This is, in fact, not surprising as their narratives portrayed their lives behind bars as having been traumatic with far-reaching consequences for their lives after their incarceration. The study found that some of the participants had histories of emotional and physical abuse before their offending behaviours. It emerged that consensual same-sex sexual relationships between females in South African prisons exist and that these relationships are, sometimes, accepted by the family members of the female inmates. The participants reported that coercive sexual relationships also take place in female prisons in South Africa. It was also reported that the conditions under which females are incarcerated are, for the most part, deplorable. It emerged that the female prisoners use a unique monetary system which is based mainly on the trade by barter system. In addition, the findings revealed that female inmates often experience daunting challenges upon their release from prison, including high rates of unemployment, stigma and discrimination, family breakdown and the psychological effects of imprisonment, all of which often compound the resolve of some of the participants to live crime-free lives.
The case of the women: Gendered harm in the contemporary prison 2005 Irwin
Prisons have long been used to respond to female criminal behavior with little thought to the unintended consequences for women, their children and the community. Since prisons for women have been modeled after those designed for their -louder and bigger brothers‖, they damage women incommensurate with the level of threat they present to society. 1 Women have long been invisible in conventional studies of the criminal justice system and in the literature of the prison. 2 As the numbers of women imprisoned in contemporary America attain unimagined size, these issues require an investigation through a gendered lens.
Counterintuitive findings from a qualitative study of mental health in English women’s prisons
International Journal of Prisoner Health, 2016
Purpose Large numbers of women in prison report significant emotional and mental health problems, and there is evidence to suggest that the prison environment may exacerbate the incidence and severity of these issues (Armour, 2012). However, there has been limited exploration of the extent to which women’s mental health problems exist prior to incarceration, whether symptoms first occur in incarceration, and how incarceration affects this. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach In-depth interviews were conducted with 43 women incarcerated in three English prisons and a thematic analysis of the data was conducted. Review of official prison records provided a form of data triangulation. Findings Analysis of the data revealed that while many women who experienced mental health issues in prison had experienced these issues in the past, a number of women reported first experiencing mental health and emotional problems only after entering prison. Although thes...
'Tactics', Agency and Power in Women's Prisons
Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, sociological research into women's experiences of imprisonment has remained relatively sparse and underdeveloped , focusing primarily on women prisoners' peer relationships, with relatively little attention given to their interaction with penal regimes. This paper draws on ethnographic data from two women's prisons in England to explore the agency and creativity represented by the 'tactics' brought to bear by prisoners—and sometimes staff—on the everyday challenges of managing prison life. It is suggested that exploring how individuals sought to 'achieve outcomes' in their face-to-face encounters and personal relationships offers a way of mapping the feel and flow of power in prisons at the level of lived experience.