Similar to the trend in California and other parts of the United States, it seems that Great Britain has also found the need to shut down female prisons, to make space for the high rates of male incarceration. Why is this a feminist issue? A varity of reasons. First of all, why is the rate of male incarceration going up in the UK and world-wide? This is a gendered problem where constructions of masculinity are in fact affecting crime rates. Furthermore, as women's prisons are shut down they are forced into smaller, more overcrowded prisons with less resources and less ability to rehabilitate.
But Deborah Coles of Inquest said the news was concerning."The pressure this re-roling will place on already overcrowded, poorly resourced women's prisons cannot be underestimated and is potentially life-threatening," she said.
"The recent reduction in overcrowding across the women's prison estate was seen as one of the reasons for the decrease in suicide rates amongst women in prison in 2005-2006.
"It would be a great shame to see a reversal of this trend and suggests the welfare of women is a low priority on the Home Office agenda."Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust, said instead of putting the women into other "bleak establishments" the Home Office should put the vast majority into the drug and alcohol treatment or mental healthcare they desperately need.
The race and class of women that these regressive policies affect is overlooked (mostly poor women of color), but usually a reason that these types of policies tend to go unoticed.
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Women's prisons consistently being shut down in GB..
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/3354
Weekly Feministing Newsletter
Feministing RSS Feed
You and I both know that there is no such thing as rehabilitation in any of our prison systems. We send criminals there for graduate work on their chosen profession of crime.
Stating that by forcing women into more crowded areas in a penetentary is going to ruin their rehabilitation is almost laughable.
That and moving women to prisons further aways from home makes visitation by family harder. This is supposed to have a profound effect on womens wellbeing.
As for rehabilitation there was also a story of a man asking for (and getting) his sentance to be increased so that he could finish his A-levels (don't know US equivalent but you do them at 17-18)inside......it's interesting anyway (sorry can't find a link to this story)
Overcrowded dangerous prisons for women?
Hooray for womens equality!
Er.. how dare they treat women prisnors like male prisnors... er only non white people suffer er it has to be the white mans fault er... Feminism!
Clueless? Table for 1, name of Hujo.
Samhita talked about MEN for the first whole paragraph of the post. If you're going to launch into one of your tired diatribes, at least read the whole post first.
"The pressure this re-roling will place on already overcrowded, poorly resourced women's prisons cannot be underestimated and is potentially life-threatening," she said.
"Similar to the trend in California and other parts of the United States, it seems that Great Britain has also found the need to shut down female prisons, to make space for the high rates of male incarceration. Why is this a feminist issue? A varity of reasons. First of all, why is the rate of male incarceration going up in the UK and world-wide? This is a gendered problem where constructions of masculinity are in fact affecting crime rates."
My God, are you really THAT lazy?
This is a gendered problem where constructions of masculinity are in fact affecting crime rates."
Are you that BLIND?
It's called a scapegoat.
No, unlike you, I can actually read. Who is being scapegoated? I don't see any scapegoating going on. All I see is a concern for men who feel that they have to be violent to prove themselves "man-enough." How is that only looking at/caring about the women?