NCJ Number
178468
Journal
Howard Journal of Criminal Justice Volume: 38 Issue: 3 Dated: August 1999 Pages: 252-266
Date Published
August 1999
Length
15 pages
Annotation
Canada's recent experiences with violent female inmates have led corrections officials to conclude that the cottage-prison is no longer appropriate for all "difficult" and violent women; this article examines the events which led to this change and the failure of the prison system to acknowledge its own accountability in those events.
Abstract
In April 1994 at the Prison for Women (P4W), a fight between six inmates and a number of guards, six of whom were injured, led to subsequent administrative actions: segregation of the inmates, the strip-searching and shackling of the women by a male emergency response team, their removal and isolation for up to 8 months, denial of inmate rights and privileges, and eventual disciplinary hearings and further punishment upon their release back into the general inmate population. An internal Board of Investigation subsequently determined that the original event was a planned attack on staff perpetrated by a group of violent inmates who hoped to escape. Claims of injustice in the administrative response to the event were made by women inmates, community workers, and lawyers, but correctional authorities generally ignored or denied these criticisms; however, an official inquiry mandated by the Solicitor General concluded that there was flagrant disregard for the inmates' rights. These events and other disturbances by violent female inmates in the women's prison system resulted in a change of policy. Women designated as maximum-security would be excluded from the new regional prisons and would be accommodated in other (men's) institutions within each region. In addition, the new regional facilities would not undertake the assessment and classification procedures necessary for all newly sentenced Federal women inmates; the mother and child units were put "on hold." Cumulatively, these changes amount to an almost total realignment of the new policies for federally sentenced women laid down in 1990. They leave the new prisons, with their women-centered regimes and their cottages to be filled by medium-security and minimum-security women with no "behavioral problems." Overall, this response has ignored the culpability of prison policies in the failure to manage violent female inmates in a constructive rather than punitive and authoritarian manner. This article concludes with an analysis of how prison policies for women have failed to meet the needs of those women whose frustrations erupt into violent behavior. 15 notes and 41 references