Vicious Women, Virtuous Women: The Female Delinquent and the Santiago de Chile Correctional House, 1860-1900 (From Birth of the Penitentiary in Latin America: Essays on Criminology, Prison Reform, and Social Control, 1830-1940, P 78-100, 1996, Ricardo D. Salvatore and Carlos Aguirre, eds. - See NCJ-

• NCJ Number: 168126
• Author(s): M S Z Campos
• Date Published: 1996
• Length: 23 pages
• Sale Source: University of Texas Press
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This essay reviews the functioning of the Santiago Women's Correctional House during the second half of the 19th century, and suggests elements to analyze the construction of gender categories within penal discourse.

Abstract

The transition in the administration of the Correctional House from a lay benevolent association to a religious congregation served to preserve the disciplining of women within the spheres of home and religion. The new religious administration adhered to the reformatory principle; religious instruction and personal interaction between nuns and inmates were central to the disciplinary process. Inmates' work (sewing, embroidery, washing, spinning) contributed to consolidate the ideal of domesticity held by the Chilean elite. Internal methods of classification and separation of inmates also replicated elite prejudices; prostitutes; thieves and serious offenders were separated from "helpless girls" arrested for vagrancy. Devoid of the scientific underpinning characteristic of the experiment of reformation in male penitentiaries, the Correctional House reinforced a traditional project: safeguarding women's attachment to God, husband, and children. Notes