Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T04:50:00.920Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Echoes of Imprisonment: Women's Experiences of “Successful (Re)integration”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2014

Laura Shantz
Affiliation:
Department of Criminology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON K1N 6N5
Jennifer M. Kilty
Affiliation:
Department of Criminology, University of OttawaOttawa, ON K1N [email protected]
Sylvie Frigon
Affiliation:
Department of Criminology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON K1N 6N5

Abstract

Women who are released from prison continue to face challenges stemming from their imprisonment. This article discusses the ways in which the prison and, by extension, the state follow women out of prison into their communities. While the state attempts to ensure “successful reintegration” for ex-prisoners, its policies, which reflect a neoliberal agenda of individual responsibilization, may in fact hinder women's chances of integrating into their communities. The article explores women's experiences of (re)integration through the voices of female ex-prisoners who served long prison terms, their families, and their advocates. The control experienced in prison echoes in women's lives on the outside: they experience dislocation, marginalization, and a need to (re)negotiate their lives. While women may physically leave the prison, the experience remains imprinted on their minds and bodies as the state continues to govern them from a distance, both through the after-effects of imprisonment and through continued surveillance.

Résumé

Les femmes qui sortent de prison continuent de faire face à des épreuves provenant de leur emprisonnement. Dans cet article, nous abordons les façons dont la prison, et par extension l'État, suivent les femmes à l'extérieur de la prison jusque dans leurs communautés. Tandis que l'État tente d'assurer une réintégration réussie des ex-prisonnières, ses politiques, reflétant un agenda néolibéral de responsabilisation individuelle, entravent possiblement les chances des femmes de réintégrer leurs communautés. Ici, nous explorons les expériences de (ré)intégration des femmes par l'entremise de témoignages d'ex-prisonnières ayant servi de longues sentences, de leur famille et de leurs défenseurs. Le contrôle que ces femmes ont connu en prison résonne dans leur vie après leur mise en liberté: elles ressentent une désagrégation, une marginalisation et un besoin de (re)négocier leur vie. Tandis que les femmes peuvent quitter la prison, le contrôle qu'elles ont subi durant leur incarcération demeure imprégné dans leur esprit et leur corps. L'État continue d'exercer, bref, une autorité sur elles à distance par les séquelles de leur emprisonnement ainsi que par une surveillance continue.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Participants' names have been changed to pseudonyms to ensure anonymity.

2 Shaw, Margaret, The Release Study: Survey of Federally Sentenced Women in the Community (Ottawa: Supply and Service Canada, 1991)Google Scholar; Office of the Auditor General of Canada [OAG], Report of the Auditor General of Canada to the House of Commons, chapter 4: Correctional Service Canada—Reintegration of Women Offenders (Ottawa: Public Works and Government Services Canada [PWGSC], 2003) [OAG Report]Google Scholar.

3 Comack, Elizabeth, Women in Trouble: Connecting Women's Law Violations to Their Histories of Abuse (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 1996)Google Scholar; Hannah-Moffat, Kelly, “Reforming the Prison: Rethinking Our Ideals,” in An Ideal Prison? Critical Essays on Women's Imprisonment in Canada, ed. Hannah-Moffat, Kelly and Shaw, Margaret (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2000), 30Google Scholar; Maidment, MaDonna, Doing Time on the Outside: Deconstructing the Benevolent Community (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Correctional authorities define “risks” as factors influencing the likelihood of an individual coming into conflict with the law, and “needs” as those areas in which women need assistance or programming in order to overcome personal barriers to successful reintegration upon release. Ironically, for most women prisoners risk and need factors tend to reflect similar areas–for example, housing, employment and/or vocational training, education, health, mental-health counselling, and treatment for substance use. Kilty, Jennifer M., “Under the Barred Umbrella: Is There Room for a Women Centred Self-Injury Policy in Canadian Corrections?Criminology and Public Policy 5 (2006), 161CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Harm, Nancy and Phillips, Susan, “You Can't Go Home Again: Women and Criminal Recidivism,” Journal of Offender Rehabilitation 32, 3 (2001), 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Holtfreter, Kristy and Morash, Merry, “The Needs of Women Offenders: Implications for Correctional Programming,” Women and Criminal Justice 14 (2003), 137CrossRefGoogle Scholar; OAG Report; Richie, Beth, “Challenges Incarcerated Women Face as They Return to Their Communities: Findings from Life History Interviews,” Crime and Delinquency 47 (2001), 368CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reisig, Michael, Holtfreter, Kristy, and Morash, Merry, “Assessing Recidivism Risk Across Female Pathways to Crime,” Justice Quarterly 23 (2006), 384CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Webster, Cheryl and Doob, Anthony, “Classification Without Validity or Equity: An Empirical Examination of the Custody Rating Scale for Federally Sentenced Women Offenders in Canada,” Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice 46 (2004), 395CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 OAG Report.

7 Correctional Service Canada [CSC], Community Strategy for Women Offenders (Ottawa: CSC, 2002)Google Scholar; Public Safety Canada [PSC], Corrections and Conditional Release Statistical Overview (Ottawa: PWGSC, 2007)Google Scholar.

8 All rates in this section refer to CSC's 2006–2007 fiscal year. PSC, Corrections and Conditional Release.

9 CSC, Organization, http://www.csc-scc.gc.ca/text/organi-eng.shtml; Hannah-Moffat, Kelly, “Empowering Risk: The Nature of Gender Responsive Strategies,” in Criminalizing Women:, ed. Balfour, Gillian and Comack, Elizabeth (Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2006), 250Google Scholar; Kilty, “Under the Barred Umbrella.”

10 CSC, Community Strategy.

11 Maidment, Doing Time on the Outside.

12 Comack, Women in Trouble.

13 Maidment, Doing Time on the Outside; O'Brien, Patricia, “‘Just Like Baking a Cake’: Women Describe the Necessary Ingredients for Successful Reintegration after Incarceration,” Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Human Services 82 (2001), 287CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Holtfreter, Kristy, Reisig, Michael, and Morash, Merry, “Poverty, State Capital and Recidivism among Women Offenders,” Criminology and Public Policy 3, 2 (2004), 185CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Uggen, Christopher, Manza, Jeff, and Behrens, Angela, “Less Than the Average Citizen: Stigma, Role Transition and the Civic Reintegration of Convicted Felons,” in After Crime and Punishment: Pathways to Offender Reintegration, ed. Maruna, Shadd and Immarigeon, Russ (Portland, OR: Willan Publishing, 2004), 261Google Scholar.

16 Maidment, Doing Time on the Outside.

17 Ibid.; CSC, Community Strategy.

18 Holtfreter et al., “Poverty, State Capital and Recidivism”; Severance, Theresa, “Concerns and Coping Strategies of Women Inmates Concerning Release: ‘It's going to take somebody in my corner,’Journal of Offender Rehabilitation 38, 4 (2004), 73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Harm and Phillips, “You Can't Go Home Again”; Reisig, Michael, Holtfreter, Kristy, and Morash, Merry, “Social Capital among Women Offenders: Examining the Distribution of Social Networks and Resources,” Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 18, 2 (2002), 167CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Richie, “Challenges Incarcerated Women Face”; Severance, “Concerns and Coping Strategies”; Wahidin, Azrini, “Reconfiguring Older Bodies in the Prison Time Machine,” Journal of Aging and Identity 7, 3 (2002), 177CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Harm and Phillips, “You Can't Go Home Again”; Richie, “Challenges Incarcerated Women Face.”

21 Maidment, Doing Time on the Outside; Pollack, Shoshana, “Dependency Discourse as Social Control,” in An Ideal Prison? Critical Essays on Women's Imprisonment in Canada, ed. Hannah-Moffat, Kelly and Shaw, Margaret (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2000), 72Google Scholar.

22 Wahidin, Azrini, Older Women in the Criminal Justice System: Running Out of Time (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2004)Google Scholar.

23 Garland, David, The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

24 Adelberg, Ellen and Currie, Claudia, Canadian Women in Conflict with the Law: Too Few to Count (Vancouver: Press Gang Publishers, 1987)Google Scholar.

25 Frigon, Sylvie, “Do Women's Bodies Matter in Prison?” in Canadian Sociology for the Asking, ed. Hird, Myra J. and Pavlich, George C. (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2007), 239Google Scholar; Kilty, “Under the Barred Umbrella”; Kilty, Jennifer M., “Resisting Confined Identities: Women's Strategies of Coping in Prison” (PhD dissertation, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, 2008)Google Scholar.

26 CSC, Organization.

27 Comack, Women in Trouble; Hannah-Moffat, “Re-forming the Prison.“

28 Foucault, Michel, “The Subject and Power,” Critical Inquiry 8 (1982)Google Scholar; Garland, David, “Governmentality and the Problem of Crime,” Theoretical Criminology 1 (1997), 173214CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Garland, “Governmentality.”

30 Foucault, “The Subject and Power.”

31 Garland, “Governmentality.”

32 Hannah-Moffat, “Re-forming the Prison”; Hannah-Moffat, “Empowering Risk”; Kilty, “Under the Barred Umbrella”; Kilty, “Resisting Confined Identities”; Snider, Laureen, “Constituting the Punishable Woman,” British Journal of Criminology 43 (2003), 354CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Task Force on Federally Sentenced Women [TFFSW], Creating Choices: The Report of the Task Force on Federally Sentenced Women (Ottawa: PWGSC, 1990)Google Scholar.

33 Codd, Helen, “Older Women, Criminal Justice, and Women's Studies,” Women's Studies International Forum 21, 2 (1998), 187CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Faith, Karlene, Unruly Women: The Politics of Confinement and Resistance (Vancouver: Press Gang Publishers, 1993)Google Scholar; Hannah-Moffat, “Empowering Risk”; Kilty, “Resisting Confined Identities”; Kilty, Jennifer M. and Frigon, Sylvie, “Karla Homolka: From a Woman in Danger to a Dangerous Woman—Chronicling the Shifts,” Women and Criminal Justice 17, 4 (2007), 37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pollack, “Dependency Discourse”; Snider, “Constituting the Punishable Woman.”

34 TFFSW, Creating Choices, 108, 109, 110, 111Google Scholar.

35 CSC, Community Strategy.

38 Maidment, Doing Time on the Outside.

39 Harding, Sandra, The Science Question in Feminism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), 141–42Google Scholar.

40 DeVault, Marjorie, “Talking Back to Sociology: Dinstinctive Contributions of Feminist Methodology,” Annual Review of Sociology 22 (1996), 2950CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Harding, The Science Question.

42 Cohen, Stanley, Visions of Social Control: Crime, Punishment and Classification (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Garland, Culture of Control; Kilty, “Resisting Confined Identities”; Maidment, Doing Time on the Outside.

43 Kilty, “Resisting Confined Identities”; Maidment, Doing Time on the Outside.

44 Lowman, John, Menzies, Robert J., and Palys, T.S., Transcarceration: Essays in the Sociology of Social Control (Aldershot, UK: Gower, 1987), 9Google Scholar, quoted in Maidment, , Doing Time on the Outside, 269Google Scholar. Maidment's term “transcarceral” is derived from Lowman et al's “transcarceration.”

45 Garland, Culture of Control.

46 CSC, Community Strategy.

47 In addition to the interviews conducted for research reflected in this article, the larger project included interviews with male ex-prisoners (n = 22); professionals working with men (n = 5); and partners of the male ex-prisoners (n = 4). A different researcher was responsible for the interviews with and about male ex-prisoners.

48 CSC, Implementing the Life Line Concept: Report of the Task Force on Long Term Offenders (Ottawa: CSC, 1998)Google Scholar.

49 See Wahidin, Older Women in the Criminal Justice System; Maidment, Doing Time on the Outside.

50 Although our specific sample was small, we believe that the 31 interviews conducted with the male sample (including partners and professionals) justified using NVivo for the data analysis.

51 New Oxford Dictionary of English (2001 ed.), s.v. “Dislocation.”

52 Wahidin, Older Women in the Criminal Justice System.

53 Hamelin, Monique, Femmes et prison (Montréal: Éditions du Méridien, 1989)Google Scholar.

54 Ibid.; Azrini, Wahidin and Moss, Dot, “Women Doing and Making Time: Reclaiming Time,” International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 24, 6 (2004), 76Google Scholar.

55 Faith, Unruly Women; Maidment, Doing Time on the Outside; OAG Report; Shaw, Release Study.

56 Kilty, “Resisting Confined Identities.”

57Je n'étais pas capable d'aller au restaurant, au restaurant il y avail trop de monde, les centres d'achats, il y avaient trop de monde, non je suis restée chez ma belle-mère ou j'allai s chez mon père, j'allai s chez du monde, j'étai s pas capable d'aller à des places ou il y avail trop de monde.”

58 Wahidin, , Older Women in the Criminal Justice System, 6970Google Scholar.

59 Martel, Joane, “To Be, One Has to Be Somewhere: Spatio-temporality in Prison Segregation,” British Journal of Criminology 46 (2006), 587CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 Aday, Ron, Aging Prisoners: Crisis in American Corrections (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003)Google Scholar; Martel, “One Has to Be Somewhere”; Wahidin, Older Women in the Criminal Justice System.

62 Wahidin, ibid.

63 Ibid.; Maidment, Doing Time on the Outside.

64 Comack, Women in Trouble; O'Brien, “Just Like Baking a Cake”; Richie, “Challenges Incarcerated Women Face”; Severance, “Concerns and Coping Strategies”; Uggen et al., “Less Than the Average Citizen.”

65 Hannah-Moffat, “Empowering Risk.”

66 Shaw, Release Study; TFFSW, Creating Choices.

67 Holtfreter et al., “Poverty, State Capital and Recidivism”; Maidment, Doing Time on the Outside; Richie, “Challenges Incarcerated Women Face.”

68 Comack, Women in Trouble; Richie, “Challenges Incarcerated Women Face”; Severance, “Concerns and Coping Strategies.”

69 Goffman, Erving, Stigma: Notes on the Management of a Spoiled Identity (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1963)Google Scholar; Kilty, “Resisting Confined Identities”; Maidment, Doing Time on the Outside.

70 Richie, “Challenges Incarcerated Women Face”; Severance, “Concerns and Coping Strategies.”

71 Comack, Women in Trouble; Maidment, Doing Time on the Outside; Richie, “Challenges Incarcerated Women Face.”

72 Shaw, Release Study.

73 Kilty, “Resisting Confined Identities.”

75 Chunn, Dorothy and Gavigan, Shelly, “From Welfare Fraud to Welfare as Fraud,” in Criminalizing Women: Gender and (In)Justice in Neo-liberal Times, ed. Balfour, Gillian and Elizabeth, Comack (Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2006), 217Google Scholar.

76 Comack, Women in Trouble; Maidment, Doing Time on the Outside.

77 Hannah-Moffat, “Re-forming the Prison”; Kilty, “Resisting Confined Identities.”

78 Maidment, Doing Time on the Outside.

79 Hannah-Moffat, “Re-forming the Prison”; Pollack, “Dependency Discourse.”

80 Eaton, Mary, Women After Prison (Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

82 Codd, “Older Women”; Faith, Unruly Women.

83 Goffman, Stigma.

84 TFFSW, Creating Choices.

85Et lorsque l'on touche an réseau communautaire en santé mentale, ils ont des facteurs d'exclusions, à partir du moment qu'on leur dit que notre client est judiciarisée, qu'elle a des problèmes de santé mentale. ils veulent pas toucher à ça.”

86 Comack, Women in Trouble; Cook, Sandy and Davies, Suzanne, eds., Harsh Punishment: International Experiences of Women's Imprisonment (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Eaton, Women After Prison; Maidment, Doing Time on the Outside.

87 Comack, Women in Trouble; Maidment, Doing Time on the Outside; Richie, “Challenges Incarcerated Women Face”; Severance, “Concerns and Coping Strategies”; Shaw, Release Study; Wahidin, Older Women in the Criminal Justice System.

88 Elizabeth Fry Societies are locally run Canadian not-for-profit organizations whose mandate is to assist women and girls in conflict with the law.

89 Hannah-Moffat, “Re-forming the Prison”; Maidment, Doing Time on the Outside.

90 Chunn and Gavigan, “From Welfare Fraud”; Codd, “Older Women”; Faith, Unruly Women; Kilty, “Resisting Confined Identities.”

91 Comack, Women in Trouble; Kilty, “Resisting Confined Identities”; Maidment, Doing Time on the Outside.

92 Severance, “Concerns and Coping Strategies.”

93 Martel, “One Has to Be Somewhere.”

94 Uggen et al., “Less Than the Average Citizen.”

95 Ibid.; Richie, “Challenges Incarcerated Women Face”; Chunn and Gavigan, “From Welfare Fraud.”

96 Kilty, “Resisting Confined Identities”; Pollack, “Dependency Discourse”; Snider, “Constituting the Punishable Woman.”

97 Chunn and Gavigan, “From Welfare Fraud”; Richie, “Challenges Incarcerated Women Face.”

98 CSC, Community Strategy.

99 PSC, Corrections and Conditional Release.