Canadian Women in Prison: A Racial and Gendered Discursive Analysis

Research shows that women are the fastest growing prison population worldwide, and this trend proves no different in Canada (Balfour, 2008; Pate, 2006; Pollack, 2003; Sudbury, 2005). According to the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies of Manitoba (n.d.) (CAEFS), this past decade has seen a 50 percent increase in the number of women who are federally incarcerated in comparison to the 15 percent increase for men. More specifically, Sudbury (2005) argued that poor, young, racialized women and girls are amid the fastest growing population in Canadian prisons. That said, the goal of this paper is to examine government documents in order to determine whether the overrepresentation of racialized Canadian women in prison are documented by the federal government