Daughters Inside: Toward a Theory of Structural Sexual Violence Against Girls Through Male Mass Incarceration

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (15-16) ◽  
pp. 1897-1918 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antje Deckert
Keyword(s):  
Protective Factor ◽  
Structural Violence ◽  
Prison Population ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Incarcerated Women ◽  
Indigenous Women ◽  
Sudden Increase ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Biological Parents ◽  
Male Incarceration

Indigenous women constitute the fastest growing segment of the prison population. Women inside have disproportionately experienced childhood sexual abuse (CSA). A key protective factor against CSA is living with both biological parents. Imprisonment removes fathers from daughters’ homes. Yet, the link between male incarceration and girls’ risk of CSA remains unexamined. A quantitative exploration of this risk in Aotearoa New Zealand, indicates that the disproportionate incarceration of Māori fathers in the 1980s exposed Māori daughters to a 5.5 times greater CSA risk. A theory of sexual structural violence through male mass incarceration may help explain high CSA victimization rates among Māori girls and incarcerated women, and the sudden increase of young Indigenous women behind bars. More qualitative research is required to verify this empirical exploration.

The downside of downsizing: Persistence of racial disparities following state prison reform

2021 ◽  
pp. 146247452110060
Author(s):  
Amy E Lerman ◽  
Alyssa C Mooney
Keyword(s):  
Racial Disparities ◽  
Prison Population ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Prison Reform ◽  
State Prison ◽  
Probation And Parole ◽  
Substantial Progress ◽  
Prison Populations ◽  
Racial Ethnic ◽  
Double Digit

Nationwide, prison populations have declined nearly 5% from their peak, and 16 states have seen double-digit declines. It is unclear, though, how decarceration has affected racial disparities. Using national data, we find substantial variation in state prison populations from 2005–2018, with increases in some states and declines in others. However, although declines in the overall state prison population were associated with declines for all groups, states with rising prison populations experienced slight upticks in prison rates among the white population, while rates among Black and Latinx populations declined. As a result, greater progress in overall decarceration within states did not translate to larger reductions in racial disparities. At the same time, we do not find evidence that a decline in prison populations is associated with a rise in jail incarceration for any racial/ethnic group. In additional exploratory analyses, we suggest that recent incarceration trends may be driven by changes in returns to prison for probation and parole violations, rather than commitments for new crimes. Our results make clear that while efforts to reverse mass incarceration have reduced the size of prison populations in some states, they have not yet made substantial progress in resolving the crisis of race in American criminal justice.

scholarly journals (In)-justice: An exploration of the dehumanization, victimization, criminalization, and over-incarceration of Indigenous women in Canada

2021 ◽  
pp. 146247452110016
Author(s):  
Michaela M McGuire ◽  
Danielle J Murdoch
Keyword(s):  
Prison Population ◽  
Indigenous Women ◽  
Systemic Racism ◽  
Federal Prisons ◽  
Critical Commentary

Indigenous women are vastly overrepresented in Canada’s federal prisons and represent the fastest growing prison population in Canada. This critical commentary utilizes a decolonial framework to examine how being Indigenous and female increases one’s risk of being victimized, murdered, and subject to colonial control by exploring the connections between the construction of Indigenous women as less than human and the use of carceral space to control, destroy, and assimilate this population. Specifically, the authors apply Woolford and Gacek’s notion of genocidal carcerality to the intersectional forces of systemic racism and discrimination that result in their overincarceration. Further, the article critiques the Indigenization of Canada’s federal correctional service for failing to meet the needs of this population and for perpetuating an assimilative and stereotypical portrayal of Indigenous women that perpetuates colonial harm.

The Power of Storytelling: The Experiences of Incarcerated Women Sharing Their Stories

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (15) ◽  
pp. 4814-4833 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Bove ◽  
Rebecca Tryon
Keyword(s):  
High School Students ◽  
Personal Growth ◽  
Prison Population ◽  
Community Outreach ◽  
The United States ◽  
Incarcerated Women ◽  
Social Constructionist ◽  
School Students ◽  
Meaningful Interaction ◽  
Societal Stigma

Women are the fastest growing prison population in the United States. Women who are incarcerated are characterized by significant mental health needs and intense societal stigma. Despite such vulnerabilities, little is known about their experiences or the pathways that lead them toward recovery and rehabilitation. This qualitative research explores the lived experiences of incarcerated women sharing their stories with high school students and their teachers as part of a community outreach project entitled “Stories of Change.” Six women were interviewed about what it was like to participate in the project. The data were coded and analyzed using phenomenological techniques, and the results were interpreted through a social constructionist framework. Five themes were revealed through an analysis of the interviews: (a) making a contribution, (b) connecting with others, (c) difficulty of telling their story, (d) identifying personal growth, and (e) moving forward. Storytelling is a powerful experience with lasting effects on the teller. This research explores the phenomenon of storytelling within a context of incarceration and stigma. These findings point toward the importance of providing programming to women within the criminal justice system that allows for meaningful interaction with normative individuals and opportunities for storytelling.

scholarly journals “Ashamed, Silent and Stuck in a System”—Applying a Structural Violence Lens to Midwives’ Stories on Social Disadvantage in Pregnancy

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (24) ◽  
pp. 9355
Author(s):  
Eva Neely ◽  
Briony Raven ◽  
Lesley Dixon ◽  
Carol Bartle ◽  
Carmen Timu-Parata
Keyword(s):  
Access To Health Care ◽  
Structural Violence ◽  
Current System ◽  
Social Disadvantage ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Access To Health ◽  
Vulnerability To Poverty ◽  
The Impact

Historical and enduring maternal health inequities and injustices continue to grow in Aotearoa New Zealand, despite attempts to address the problem. Pregnancy increases vulnerability to poverty through a variety of mechanisms. This project qualitatively analysed an open survey response from midwives about their experiences of providing maternity care to women living with social disadvantage. We used a structural violence lens to examine the effects of social disadvantage on pregnant women. The analysis of midwives’ narratives exposed three mechanisms by which women were exposed to structural violence, these included structural disempowerment, inequitable risk and the neoliberal system. Women were structurally disempowered through reduced access to agency, lack of opportunities and inadequate meeting of basic human needs. Disadvantage exacerbated risks inequitably by increasing barriers to care, exacerbating the impact of adverse life circumstances and causing chronic stress. Lastly, the neoliberal system emphasised individual responsibility that perpetuated inequities. Despite the stated aim of equitable access to health care for all in policy documents, the current system and social structure continues to perpetuate systemic disadvantage.

Greening the Gulag: Austerity, neoliberalism, and the making of the “green prisoner”

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 1120-1136
Author(s):  
B Jewell Bohlinger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Prison Population ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Effective Strategies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cost Cutting ◽  
Important Challenge ◽  
The Impact

Over the past 30 years the U.S. prison population has exploded. With the impact of climate change already here, we are also seeing new critiques of mass incarceration emerge, namely their environmental impact. In response to these burgeoning critiques as well as calls to action by the Justice Department to implement more sustainable and cost-effective strategies in prisons, the United States is experiencing a surge in prison sustainability programs throughout the country. Although sustainability is an important challenge facing the world, this paper argues that while “greening” programs seem like attempts to reform current methods of imprisonment, sustainability programming is an extension of the neoliberalization of incarceration in the United States. By emphasizing cost cutting while individualizing rehabilitation, prisons mobilize sustainability programming to produce “green prisoners” who are willing to take responsibility for their rehabilitation and diminish their economically burdensome behaviors (i.e. excessive wastefulness). Using semi-structure journals and interviews at three Oregon prisons, this paper investigates these ideas through the lens of the Sustainability in Prisons Project.

On the Weak Mortality Returns of the Prison Boom: Comparing Infant Mortality and Homicide in the Incarceration Ledger

2017 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael T. Light ◽  
Joey Marshall
Keyword(s):  
Infant Mortality ◽  
Instrumental Variable ◽  
Prison Population ◽  
State Level ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Homicide Rates ◽  
Infant Deaths ◽  
Instrumental Variable Estimation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Level Data

The justifications for the dramatic expansion of the prison population in recent decades have focused on public safety. Prior research on the efficacy of incarceration offers support for such claims, suggesting that increased incarceration saves lives by reducing the prevalence of homicide. We challenge this view by arguing that the effects of mass incarceration include collateral infant mortality consequences that call into question the number of lives saved through increased imprisonment. Using an instrumental variable estimation on state-level data from 1978 to 2010, this article simultaneously considers the effects of imprisonment on homicide and infant mortality to examine two of the countervailing mortality consequences of mass incarceration. Results suggest that while incarceration saves lives by lowering homicide rates, these gains are largely offset by the increases in infant mortality. Adjusted figures that count the number of increased infant deaths attributable to incarceration suggest that the mortality benefits of imprisonment over the past three decades are 82% lower than previously thought.

scholarly journals “He reached across the river and healed the generations of hara”: Structural violence, historical trauma, and healing among contemporary Whanganui Māori

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Tarapuhi Vaeau
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Structural Violence ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Historical Trauma ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Kaupapa Māori ◽  
Space State ◽  
The Media ◽  
Relations Of Power

<p>This thesis provides insights into the unique forms of oppression that Māori face today. It explores how Māori experience, understand, and heal from historical trauma in contemporary Aotearoa/New Zealand. It does this by arguing that space, state bureaucracies, and public discourse can be violent, and considering sites of (re)traumatisation for my participants, specifically by examining the internalisation of responsibilisation and colonial discourse disseminated through the media and government processes, underlining the implications for health care. I show the ways that space constructs and reproduces relations of power and surveillance. As well I explore spaces that act as living symbols of inequality. This thesis uses structural violence and historical trauma to frame this analysis and thus highlights the lived experience where neoliberalism and colonialism intersect. The understandings that are presented here are informed by seven months of fieldwork which was guided by a kaupapa Māori framework and used participant observation and interviews with Māori who have iwi affiliations to the Whanganui River. Using stories from eleven participants, as well as autoethnography, this thesis demonstrates the importance of whakapapa, whanaungatanga, and wairuatanga in healing for Māori.</p>

Participation in Sport, Empowerment, and Safety From Violence: Critiquing the Connections Through Women’s Experiences in Aotearoa/New Zealand

2021 ◽  
pp. 107780122110089
Author(s):  
Lynzi Armstrong ◽  
Abby Hutchison
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Protective Factor ◽  
Gendered Violence ◽  
Male Athletes ◽  
Women’S Experiences ◽  
Women's Experiences ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Global Issue

Men’s violence against women is a global issue, and in recent decades its relationship with sport has been examined. Much research has focused on male athletes as perpetrators, seeking to understand how sport may foster misogynistic behavior. However, paradoxically, recent research has also examined women’s involvement in sport as a protective factor against gendered violence. This article explores this, drawing on the perspectives of 20 women. We argue that sport was experienced in contradictory ways, and thus, positioning women’s involvement in sport as a protective factor obscures complex experiences and reinforces the narrative that women are responsible for their safety.

Ghost Mapping

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rashad Shabazz
Keyword(s):  
Premature Death ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
Confined Space ◽  
Aids Epidemic ◽  
Key Sites ◽  
State Prisons ◽  
Male Incarceration ◽  
Political Realities ◽  
Hiv Aids

This chapter examines how high rates of Black male incarceration, enabled by the war on drugs that swept tens of thousands of Black men into state prisons, exacerbated the HIV/AIDS epidemic among Black Chicagoans. As HIV/AIDS emerged in the early 1980s, prisons became key sites where the disease could hide and spread. The high rates of Black incarceration created a geography of risk—the sociospatial production of HIV infection—for prisoners and the communities they returned to. Although HIV/AIDS could affect anyone, the combination of geographic (segregation and the war on drugs) and structural forces (mass incarceration, premature death, lack of healthcare, and politics) increased the risk in Black Chicago. The risk of transmission of HIV is fourteen times higher in prison. Diseases like small spaces, and the confined space of Illinois prisons encouraged transmission. This was compounded by vexing political realities the returning prisoners faced at home.

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