The Incarceration of Women

Punishing Bodies, Breaking Spirits

L. Moore, P. Scraton

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137317841
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This unique book provides a rare insight into the debilitating impact of regimes that fail to respond to the complex and gender specific needs of women behind bars. Exploring the marginalization, mental health and experiences of women in prison, it specifically focuses on the legacy of women's imprisonment in Northern Ireland.

1

Women behind Bars

Introduction

Reflecting a growing literature on women’s imprisonment, Diana Medlicott (2007, p. 246) notes that historically it has been a ‘shadowy phenomenon’ as the discrete needs of women prisoners have remained unidentified, institutionally subsumed within policies and practices that prioritize a majority male prison population. Neglecting women’s experiences, and written as if ‘gender did not matter’ (Bosworth, 2000, p. 266), traditional penal histories have ignored ‘the physical presence of women in prisons and the fact that prisons themselves are gendered institutions, reflecting and reinforcing beliefs about sexual difference’ (Rafter, 1990, p. xii). Further, the experiences of Black and minority ethnic women have been marginalized and largely absent from prison histories.

More recently, feminist criminologists’ research and women prisoners’ testimonies have sought to redress these imbalances, challenging established male-oriented interpretations of the penal system. Evidence from these accounts has focused on the gendered construction of imprisonment, demonstrating that ‘interpretive frameworks derived from men’s experience are insufficient’ (Knepper and Scicluna, 2010, p. 408). Despite the recent identification of women prisoners’ distinct, gendered needs, at best they remain marginal to the study and practice of imprisonment.

The genesis of contemporary penal policy and practice can be understood only against the backdrop of the inseparable histories of punishment and incarceration. This chapter explores key developments from pre-modern punishments, through the emergence of separate prisons for women, to the international rise in women’s imprisonment in late 20th-century advanced democratic states. It also traces the origins and consolidation of recent ‘gender-specific’ initiatives.

Early developments in women’s imprisonment

Michael Welch (1997, p. 18) considers the ‘prominent theme in the history of women and punishment’ to be ‘the persistent emphasis on regulating female morality’. In early modern European and colonial states, women were subject to extensive social control, punished for alleged witchcraft, adultery, disobedience, sexual deviance and for gossiping – or being ‘scolds’. The physicality of punishments inflicted hurt and degradation on the body, including branding, whipping, burning, drowning, hanging and decapitation. A tangible social sanction, punishments were delivered regularly as a public spectacle. Thorsten Sellin (cited in Johnston, 2009, p. 14S), for example, notes a woman executed in 1617 in Amsterdam ‘had 21 prior arrests and had been exposed on the scaffold 11 times, whipped 8 times, branded with a hot iron 5 times, had her ears cut off, and had been banished for life 7 times’. While men and women were subject to extreme physical brutality, the punishment of women was influenced by social constructions of what constituted female ‘decency’. Spierenburg (1998, p. 49) notes an example of such ironic gentility in Amsterdam, where most condemned women were garrotted rather than hanged, the former considered as more ‘acceptable’ for females, despite prolonging the agonies of death.

Throughout the 16th century, changes in socio-economic conditions including mass migration from rural villages to developing urban areas resulted in the growth of begging, vagrancy, prostitution and petty crime. Responding to fears about the potential threat of social unrest, a range of institutions of confinement developed. The industrial revolution created a demand for increased factory labour. Women, children, the mentally ill, the homeless and prostitutes were significant sources of labour, as were those charged with criminal offences. Consequently, ‘a merging of the criminal and welfare classes’ developed in factories known as ‘houses of correction’ (O’Toole, 2006, p. 9). Throughout Europe and the colonies, ‘houses of correction’ or ‘bridewells’ were established to confine those convicted of petty offences such as vagrancy or ‘idleness’. Their objective was to reform through labour and women convicted of ‘disorderly’ conduct, acts involving prostitution, adultery and co-habitation, were committed to houses of correction (Shoemaker, 1991, p. 173). From the 17th century, workhouses were built to reform vagrants, beggars and other petty offenders alongside accommodation and welfare relief for poor, old and sick people, orphans and widows.

Despite being centres of punishment and reform, by the 17th century many houses of correction had become corrupt and dangerous places. They included the London Bridewell, run by its governors as a ‘highly profitable brothel’ (Zedner, 1998, p. 295). In contrast, opened in 1645, Amsterdam’s Spinhuis was the first discrete women’s prison, welcomed as a ‘model institution … admired far and wide’. Initially housing only poor and ‘disrespectful’ women, its population expanded to include women who disobeyed husbands (a persistent theme in the incarceration of women) and parents, ‘drunks’ and prostitutes. Women were expected to work to ‘instil habits of discipline’; the ‘order, the systematic labor, and the segregation of the Dutch Spinhuis shone out against the dank, filthy disarray and corruption that overtook most early houses of correction’ (p. 295).

Prior to the 18th century, jails throughout Europe and the colonies functioned primarily as centres of detention, rather than as places of punishment. They prioritized the incarceration of debtors and those awaiting trial or the execution of a sentence. Women incarcerated in these filthy, disease-ridden and chaotic places were ‘generally housed within male prisons and often herded alongside men’ (Zedner, 1998, p. 295). From the 17th to the 19th century, transportation from Great Britain and Ireland to the colonies of Australia and North America consolidated as an alternative form of punishment for convicted men, women and children. Conditions on convict ships were harsh and many prisoners failed to survive the passage. Women often endured extreme sexual violence from male convicts and sailors. Arriving in Australia, convict women who survived the passage were sent to ‘female factories’ where they worked at sewing, laundering and spinning. Often subjected to harsh treatment and punishment, many were forcibly separated from their children who were accommodated in orphanages. Over 12,000 women were transported to the female factories in Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), designated a penal colony throughout the first half of the 19th century (O’Toole, 2006, p. 171).

During the 18th century, institutions resembling the modern prison were founded in European cities and by the close of the century imprisonment had embarked on its ‘triumphant rise’ as the pre-eminent form of punishment (Spierenburg, 1998, p. 55). Physical punishments, including execution, continued but were administered less frequently. By the close of the 19th century, many corporal punishments had been ‘removed from the public realm’. No longer a public spectacle, executions were carried out ‘within prison walls’ (Spierenburg, 1998, p. 55). Prison architecture developed, emphasizing regulation, order and surveillance, most notably adopting Jeremy Bentham’s panoptical design (Hirst, 1998).

Michel Foucault (1979) dates the emergence of a modern, pan-European penal system between the mid-18th and early 19th centuries. McGowan (1998, p. 71) notes that ‘the contrast between a prison in 1780 and one in 1865 could scarcely have been greater’. The former was disorganized and arbitrary, housing a mixed population and demonstrating ‘little evidence of authority’. This was replaced by ‘quiet’ incarceration, banning conversation under the ‘silent system’. Increasingly, prisoners were confined to individual cells, their lives ‘carefully regulated’ by manifestations of a new ‘culture’ of imprisonment. Spierenburg (1998, p. 58), however, argues that the use of confinement within workhouses as a form of punishment had consolidated and, ‘far from representing radical change’, the increased number of penitentiaries in the 18th century was a legacy left from the previous two centuries.

Mary Bosworth’s (2000) history of female confinement in the Hôpital de la Salpêtrière, Paris, also challenges Foucault’s claim of a decisive break between the ancien and modern regimes of punishment. She notes that early in the 17th century, Salpêtrière – a female house within the larger Hôpital Général – was shaped by the ‘contradictory aims of punishment, welfare and charity’ which eventually characterized the 19th-century penal system (Bosworth, 2000, p. 269). Salpêtrière was built in response to ‘civic concerns about mendacity and urban unrest’. For three decades it was a ‘place of general confinement for women’, and there were different routes through which women arrived within its walls. Some were sentenced by courts, given specific determinate sentences, while others were detained indefinitely on the demands of neighbours, relatives or husbands, particularly for alleged adultery.

Within the Salpêtrière regime, women were labelled as ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘poor’ and ‘mad’ with ‘ideas about femininity’ determining their treatment (p. 267). Bosworth notes an ‘overlap of penal ideas’ (p. 270). For example, women were categorized differently and separated to prevent ‘contagion’, yet as many as six women shared a single bed. They were stigmatized, often physically branded, heads shaved, and compelled to make public confessions. Constructions of femininity prevailed and women were expected to perform traditionally female tasks such as embroidery and weaving. Although nominally a secular institution, religious services were central to the daily routine.

In the late 18th century the French Revolution, ‘superficially at least’, introduced an ‘equitable, sanitary and universal standard for women’s punishment’. By 1794 the women’s prison at Salpêtrière was closed. Two years earlier, 35 female residents were killed and others raped by ‘marauding’ revolutionaries. Bosworth (2000, pp. 274–275) concludes that ‘female offenders, poor women and those who were mad were not to be suffered either in the old society or in the new’.

The impact of 19th century penal reform movements

As prison building intensified through the 19th century, reform movements developed in Europe, Australia and North America initiating campaigns to end overcrowding and ill-treatment of prisoners and to develop regimes based on rehabilitative ideals. Concerned about the dire conditions in English prisons, penal reformer John Howard travelled extensively, visiting houses of correction and prisons throughout Europe. Particularly impressed by the Dutch example (McGowan, 1998), Howard recommended the separation of male and female prisoners and segregation according to seriousness of criminal offence. He proposed cleanliness and quiet, individual cells for night-time solitude, purposeful work through the day and improvements in health and spiritual care. Gender segregation was also a key concern for other penal reformers, including English Quaker Elizabeth Fry, who established the Newgate-based Ladies’ Association for the Reformation of Female Prisoners. Its mission was

To provide for the clothing, the instruction and the employment of the women; to introduce them to a knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, and to form in them, as much as possible, those habits of order, sobriety and industry which may render them peaceable, whilst in prison, and respectable when they leave it.

(Ryder, 1884 cited in Craig, 2009, p. 38S)

Volunteer groups of ‘Lady Visitors’ were organized to supply food and clothing, befriend women prisoners and establish education for children imprisoned with their mothers. Fry considered that for propriety and to provide positive role models women should be supervised only by female wardens. She upheld the female warden as ‘the representative and guardian of her sex’ (cited in Zedner, 1998, p. 35). In 1825 Fry published Observations on the Siting, Superintendence, and Government of Female Prisoners, offering a vision significantly distinct from male regimes:

Whereas proposals for male prison reform emphasized uniform treatment, formal direction, and rigid adherence to rules, Fry advocated that women be ‘tenderly treated’ with gentleness and sympathy so that they would submit cheerfully to the rules and cooperate willingly in their own reform.

(Zedner, 1998, p. 301)

While Fry’s campaign was significant, in London’s Newgate prison overcrowding and poor conditions persisted until its closure in 1828. In the 1820s, however, campaigns by middle-class women reformers contributed to the development of legislation requiring the separation of men and women prisoners in France, the United States and England. In England, legislative reform prohibited the flogging of women prisoners, and the 1823 Gaol Act required the separation of women from men under the supervision of women staff. Brixton prison opened in 1853 as England’s first women-only convict prison. Gender segregation also suited the prison authorities as it alleviated concern about sexual abuse, assaults, corruption and prostitution in mixed-gender prisons. The imperative for separate prisons for women in the early 19th century was ‘in large part disciplinary’ (Zedner, 1998, p. 297).

Despite the introduction of legislation requiring separation, ‘in practice’ implementation tended to be limited to accommodating women within rooms in the male prison. In Craig’s (2009, p. 38S) assessment, however, Fry and her fellow reformers had identified ‘humane ways to manage prisoners’ in regimes through which ‘incarcerated women and children could be rehabilitated’. Lucia Zedner (1998, p. 298) agrees that despite limitations regarding its implementation, the principle of gender separation was ‘one of the major achievements of nineteenth-century penal reform’, sparing women from the ‘degradation and exploitation of eighteenth-century prison life’.

Penal reform was not confined to English prisons. In the United States from the period of the American Revolution (1775–1783), the criminal justice system underwent profound change and ‘the concept of prison reform seized the imaginations of many Americans’ (Freedman, 1984, p. 8). It was a politically vibrant period when ‘democratic principles were receiving their most enthusiastic endorsement’ and openness and opportunity emerged as symbolic ideals. Yet ‘those convicted of crimes would be confined behind walls, in single cells, and would follow rigid and unyielding routines’ (Rothman, 1998, p. 100). In 1790 the first penitentiary was built in Philadelphia, designed as a place for penance where prisoners were expected to reflect in solitude and isolation to repent their sins.

Women prisoners constituted a small proportion of those held in state penitentiaries, less than in local jails. They were ‘more closely regulated by … private institutions [the family and church]’ and so ‘less likely to become the subjects of new public agencies of punishment’ (Freedman, 1984, p. 10). Sentences, typically, were for ‘petty street crimes’ and, again reflecting patriarchal values, gender-specific offences that breached ‘moral and sexual codes’ (p. 11). In her historical analysis of women’s imprisonment in the United States, Nicole Rafter (1985, p. 4) notes that the practice of holding female prisoners ‘en masse in old-fashioned large cells’ in separate units within male institutions persisted into the 19th century. While men were closely supervised and regimented, women prisoners ‘seldom had a matron’ and ‘idleness rather than hard labor was their curse’.

Estelle Freedman (1984, p. 15) observes that the neglect of women prisoners in US prisons was ‘rarely benevolent’ and a predominant ‘pattern of overcrowding, harsh treatment, and sexual abuse recurred throughout prison histories’. Freedman notes that the dire situation was well illustrated by the death in 1826 of Rachel Welch in New York’s Auburn penitentiary. Auburn had no separate, individual cells for women and approximately 30 women were accommodated in an attic. The windows were sealed to prevent communication with men. While held in solitary confinement Rachel Welch became pregnant, was flogged during pregnancy and died in child-birth. In 1828 public concern about the circumstances of her death generated new legislation and the separation of male and female prisoners in county prisons. In 1839 Mount Pleasant Female Prison opened as a separate women’s unit within Sing Sing penitentiary (Freedman, 1984).

Rafter (1985, p. 10) identifies three phases in securing the separation of male and female prisoners in the United States. First, they were part of the general population, accommodated in separate cells or rooms. Then they were confined in separate sections within or attached to male penitentiaries. Finally, they were moved to discrete more isolated buildings within or outside the grounds of the main prison. Despite reformers’ intentions to establish discrete prisons or units to identify and meet the needs of women prisoners, separation often resulted in their neglect as they constituted a small minority within the overall male prison population. Receiving less discipline and supervision than men, women prisoners also had greater opportunities for association, exposing them to higher levels of physical and emotional risk.

In the 1840s, a brief interlude of ‘radical experimentation’ occurred in Mount Pleasant, the women’s unit in Sing Sing male penitentiary. It was initiated by matron Eliza Farnham who ‘exhorted staff not to rely on punishment, and abolished the rule of silence’ (Zedner, 1998, p. 302). It was feared, however, that Farnham’s reforms would create discontent among male prisoners and she was forced to resign. Despite such rare initiatives, brutal punishment and treatment persisted throughout US penal establishments. For example, in Ohio Penitentiary in the 1870s, women were not allowed to converse, were held in solitary confinement, beaten and forced to sit naked and blindfolded in tubs of water while electric currents were applied to their bodies (Rafter, 1985).

Throughout Europe, North America, Australia and UK colonies, gender separation became a core characteristic of penal regimes, often after scandals and inquiries regarding women’s treatment in male regimes. However, the implementation of gender separation was often ad hoc and piecemeal, as evidenced by the Canadian example. Opened in 1835, Kingston Penitentiary was ‘one of the first Canadian institutions to incarcerate women for long periods of time’ (Arbour, 1996, p. 239). From inception, provision of appropriate arrangements for women presented challenges for the regime. As Roger Neufeld notes (1998, p. 101), when the first three women arrived at Kingston in 1835, ‘authorities had no idea where to put them … [and they] were whisked to the prison hospital, which became female quarters until 1839, when other makeshift arrangements were made’. Along with mentally ill prisoners, women were viewed by the regime as ‘nuisances by their presence in the penitentiary’. They ‘seemed forever in the way of the prison’s expansion’ and were ‘moved from the hospital to another ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Women behind Bars
• 2. Agency, Violence and Regulation in the Incarceration of Women
• 3. Researching Prison, Women’s Voices
• 4. Women’s Imprisonment, Conflict and Transition
• 5. Inside a Deteriorating Regime
• 6. Self-Harm and Suicide
• 7. Tale of Two Inquests
• 8. The Prison Within
• 9. The Pain of Confinement and Decarceration
• Appendix: Campaign Organizations against Women’s Imprisonment
• Bibliography
• Index