NCJ Number
103328
Editor(s)
S Gutteridge
Date Published
1986
Length
261 pages
Annotation
This account of women's prisons in Great Britain from the 18th century to the present shows how corrections policies and practices have been shaped not only by penal demands, but by patriarchal assumptions regarding the nature of female criminals.
Abstract
After a brief overview of U.S. and British trends in female criminality and corrections, the book discusses how doctors' and psychologists' ideologies from the late 19th and early 20th centuries have shaped current attitudes and programs in women's prisons. Women in prison have always been treated differently from men, considered more morally depraved and corrupt and in need of special, closer forms of control and confinement. An analysis of the therapeutic regimes at Cornton Vale and New Holloway prisons concludes that, while these rehabilitative ideals have generated group therapy and counseling, they have had little impact on the basic prison goals of disciplining and punishing women. Intensive field work over an 8-month period in Cornton Vale provides the basis for a discussion of the daily lives of women inmates. These chapters emphasize that work in women's prisons, principally cleaning and producing goods for sale, only benefits the institution and generally does not teach usable job skills. Moreover, barriers between staff and inmates continue to exist in the therapeutic community and any attempts to form friendships are deemed detrimental to good prison discipline. The authors conclude that over time corrections policies have transformed the woman prisoner from evil to mad and accordingly have instituted closer forms of control reaching beyond her body into her mind. Drawings, photographs, references, and indexes.