Outsiders inside, the social context of women's lawbreaking and imprisonment

grantor: University of TorontoThis study is an examination of the impact of systemic oppression on women's agency and autonomy and its relationship to women's lawbreaking. The primary aim of this study was to uncover the ways that women's autonomy is impacted by systemic inequities and to find out how participants negotiated these inequalities. Recently implemented "woman-centred" correctional policy and programming was also examined and compared to incarcerated women's own lawbreaking and life history narratives. Data was gained from life history interviews and focus groups with incarcerated women, interviews with front-line correctional staff, and content analysis of correctional policy. This study reports findings in three main areas. First, the use of "woman-centred" therapeutic discourse within a women's prison functions as a means of managing women's institutional behaviour. Psychological treatment is integral to the prison's power to assess and control women's risk, behaviour, and qualification for privileges and release. Second, the racialized quality of a gender based model discounts black women's experiences and further perpetuates their outsider status. Psychological discourse based on notions of women's sexual victimization did not resonate with Black women's experiences, whose criminal convictions were largely economic. Lastly, the use of an individualistic and racialized "ethic of care" approach to relationships between staff and prisoners depoliticize women's social experiences and contribute to the overall correctional agenda of punishment and control. This study concludes with recommendations for an alternative theoretical paradigm and policy directions that recognize the relationship between socio-economic inequalities based on race, class and gender oppression, and women's lawbreaking behaviour.Ph.D