'I've stood at so many windows': Women in Prison, Performativity and Survival

For women, in particular, this requires a reiteration of gender norms, predicated on images of what female citizenship involves, including motherhood, caring roles, selflessness and non-violence (as I discuss in Walsh, 2018: 4-10). [...]what I would hope to demonstrate is that it is not merely a case of theatrical reading of the social world of prisons, but the intent and force of prison sentences and programmed interventions that bring into being the 'corrections' of incarcerated people. In the research, I aimed to consider how these performances might indicate some of the pressing criminological issues that relate to women: namely that as the system is largely constructed for the needs and benefits of male prisoners, and the specificities of women's concerns are not always attended to (Naffine 1996: 5; Chesney-Lind 1997: 30; Corston 2011: 2). [...]when women's readiness to leave prison is adjudicated, there is little understanding of how institutionalization itself has affected women's abilities to adopt the language and forms of transformation that help people progress through the system. In the wider research (see Walsh, forthcoming), I explore the set of coded behaviors that make space for changes through improvisation. Since the site or field of the institution provides a fairly rigid set of scripts for behavior of both workers and inmates, we must acknowledge that the sociopolitical and economic context of the milieu impacts and changes these scripts. In a different way, Lizzie Seal's work on gender and representations of women who kill (2010: 1 - 17) points out that normative assumptions of gender roles mean it is easier to perpetuate thinking of women as victims than as perpetrators. 2 I make use of the term 'gendered' in relation to the conventions of feminist criminology that seeks to highlight the inevitable assumption of prison spaces as designed for male subjects, constituted and informed by masculinity. [...]where I suggest a space is considered in a gendered way, I am not eliding the male gender, but rather, articulating that gender constructions, roles and performances should be clearly considered in relation to the ways punishment operates on the bodies of both prisoners and officers. 3 Of course, there are other claims regarding the purposes of incarceration: I am highlighting the most hegemonic script that informs the Ministry of Justice's decision making, budget allocation and programming.