NCJ Number
177149
Journal
Theoretical Criminology Volume: 3 Issue: 1 Dated: February 1999 Pages: 71-94
Date Published
1999
Length
24 pages
Annotation
This analysis of a proposed model of risk assessment for female inmates in Canada discusses risk theory and the concept of the emergence of a risk society, and argues that the concept of risk is gendered, ambiguous, and flexible in the practical instances of governing in corrections and other settings.
Abstract
The analysis also argues that subjective disciplinary techniques of governing coexist and interrelate with actuarial techniques of risk management and that actuarial techniques of assessing female inmates' risks tend to redefine unsatisfied needs as risk factors. The discussion also notes that Canadian correctional officials have restructured Federal women's imprisonment and created a new woman-centered model of punishment. Corrections in Canada has theoretically replaced the traditional male, static, security-based approach to corrections with a more individualized, dynamic model of punishment that responds to the needs and risks represented by women. However, the implementation of this model has been marred by exclusion and by redefinitions of the meaning of woman-centered corrections and of the experiences and realities of the female offender. Some of the most significant of the changes include the definition, assessment, and management of women's risk and needs in the new regional prisons. The analysis concludes that corrections research and policy models developed to describe and analyze women's risk in corrections need modification and that risk technologies are part of a wider program of neoliberal governance for female offenders. In addition, risk theorists need to focus on many unanswered questions related to issues such as the efficiency and coerciveness of actuarial forms of power versus other forms of power and whether shifts have occurred only in discourse or also in practice. Notes and 65 references (Author abstract modified)