Confining Femininity:

Abstract

In this article, the author suggests that criminological accounts of the birth of the prison have been characterised by an unacknowledged chronological and gender bias. Rather than being the result of a global transformation in the ideology of punishment, as most authors have suggested with regard to men, the imprisonment of women was marked by significant continuities in forms and ideologies of punishment from the early modern period. To show this continuity, the author analyses the history of women's imprisonment in Hôpital de la Salpêtrière in Paris from 1684 to 1916. Despite the radical changes it underwent in different historical and political context, archival documents from the institution reveal that women throughout this period were brought to the prison on similar grounds and subjected to similar regimes. This article suggests that placing gender at the centre of the criminological enterprise transforms understanding of the development and legitimacy of imprisonment today and in the past.