Female Imprisonment

This book is a reflection on the nature of confinement, experienced by prison inmates as everyday life. It explores the meanings, purposes, and consequences involved with spending every day inside prison. Female Imprisonment results from an ethnographic study carried out in a small prison facility located in the south of Portugal, and Frois uses the data to analyze how incarcerated women talk about their lives, crimes, and expectations. Crucially, this work examines how these women consider prison: rather than primarily being a place of confinement designed to inflict punishment, it can equally be a place of transformation that enables them to regain a sense of selfhood. From in-depth ethnographic research involving close interaction with the prison population, in which inmates present their life histories marked by poverty, violence, and abuse (whether as victims, as agents, or both), Frois observes that the traditional idea of doing time, in the sense of a strenuous, repressive, or restrictive experience, is paradoxically transformed into having time an experience of expanded self-awareness, identity reconstruction, or even of deliverance. Ultimately, this engaging and compassionate study questions and defies customary accounts of the impact of prisons on those subjected to incarceration, and as such it will be of great interest for scholars and students of penology and the criminal justice system.

Provides a criminological and anthropological analysis of a "safe haven" prison setting Offers a detailed exploration of women's lives in a facility in South Portugal, exploring inmates' detailed narratives, a focus on female confinement, and the importance of family and relationships before and after imprisonment Speaks to academics and professionals in Criminology, Sociology, Anthropology, Human Rights and Psychology

Auteur
Catarina Frois is Senior Researcher at the Center for Research in Anthropology and Invited Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology, ISCTE - Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Portugal.

Texte du rabat
This book is a reflection on the nature of confinement, experienced by some people as everyday life. It explores the meanings, purposes, and consequences involved with spending every day inside prison. Female Imprisonment results from an ethnographic study carried out in a small prison facility located in the south of Portugal, and Frois uses the data to analyze how incarcerated women talk about their lives, crimes, and expectations. Crucially, this work examines how these women consider prison: rather than being primarily a place of confinement designed to inflict punishment, but as a place of transformation, self-reconstruction, and even somewhere they can gain an awareness of the significance of their gender as part of their identity.
From interviews held in this institution, where inmates present their life histories marked by poverty, violence and abuse (whether as victims, as agents, or both), Frois observes that the traditional idea of doing time, in thesense of a strenuous, repressive, or restrictive experience, is paradoxically transformed into having time - an experience of expanded self-awareness, identity reconstruction, or even of deliverance. Ultimately, this engaging and compassionate study questions and defies customary accounts of the impact of prisons on those subjected to incarceration, and as such will be of great interest for scholars and students of penology and the criminal justice system.

Contenu
Chapter 1.Introduction. A Doll's House.- Chapter 2. Portugal, a Mild-Mannered Country. Penal and Penitentiary Overview.- Chapter 3. Entering Odemira Prison Facility.- Chapter 4. 'Will You Be Back Again Tomorrow?'.- Chapter 5. The Effects of Imprisonment.- Chapter 6. Tension, Authority, Rights.- Chapter 7. The Rule, the Letter, the Spirit of the Law.- Chapter 8. Institutionalizing Exclusion.- Chapter 9. Getting in is Fast, Getting out is Harder!Chapter 10.Conclusion