NCJ Number
205392
Journal
Howard Journal of Criminal Justice Volume: 43 Issue: 2 Dated: May 2004 Pages: 149-163
Date Published
May 2004
Length
15 pages
Annotation
This study identifies a continuity of practices and regimes found within the semi-penal women’s institutions of the 18th and early 19th century and in contemporary women’s correctional institutions.
Abstract
Originally developed in the 18th and early 19th centuries, a range of alternative, semi-penal, semi-incarcerative institutions attempted to reform deviant women back to acceptable standards of femininity. The current research compares these early semi-penal reform institutions to contemporary correctional facilities for women, particularly probation hostels, in an effort to illustrate a history of semi-penal sanctions for women. Three defining characteristics of the early semi-penal institutions are enumerated and include, (1) the operation of such institutions outside of state control; (2) the semi-incarcerative nature of the institutions in which women are neither fully free nor fully institutionalized; and (3) the sanctioning of women not only for criminal offenses, but for offenses to the standard of femininity as well. These three characteristics are applied to the current women’s probation hostels, which are operated as an alternative sanction to formal criminal justice. While women’s probation hostels may be an important component for reducing the number of women in prison, the use of such hostels should not be considered without problems. Current women’s hostels are wrapped up in the “care” and “control” philosophies in which deviant women are taken in and reformed to “appropriate” standards of femininity. Thus, intense methods of regulating women are disguised as “welfare.” A move toward the standardization of practices within probation hostels has the potential to knock down outdated modes of thinking and practices within the field of female criminal justice. Notes, references