Feminine Fortresses: Woman-Centered Prisons?

Abstract

This article examines some of the theoretical and substantive issues associated with the uncritical embrace of selected feminist ideals in recent Canadian attempts to restructure and rethink federal women's imprisonment. The article focuses on the limitations of a woman-centered model of corrections and how these models of punishment fail to depart from more traditional conceptualizations of punishment. The definition and constitution of a woman-centered regime is troublesome because it relies on a problematic category of “woman”; it is insensitive to wider social, economic, and political cultural relations of power; it sets up a false dichotomy between the woman-and male-centered regimes; and it denies the material and legal realities of imprisonment. These concerns illustrate clearly that although the woman-centered model of corrections appears to be less intrusive and less punitive, it is not; further, the oppressive qualities of incarceration are simply obscured by a feminized social control talk.