Hungry on the inside: Prison food as concrete and symbolic punishment in a women’s prison

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 240-255 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy B Smoyer ◽  
Giza Lopes
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Incarcerated Women ◽  
Health Providers ◽  
Formerly Incarcerated ◽  
Women's Narratives ◽  
Adequate Food ◽  
Women’S Perceptions ◽  
Women's Prison ◽  
Formerly Incarcerated Women

Women’s perceptions of the prison experience and the punishing dimensions of their confinement are under-examined. To expand knowledge in this area, Sexton’s theory of penal consciousness is used to analyze formerly incarcerated women’s narratives about prison food. This analysis builds understanding about the lived experience of incarceration by explicating one dimension of prisoners’ understandings and perceptions of punishment. Women’s narratives describe both concrete and symbolic punishments associated with food. Participants spoke about poorly designed, sloppy food systems that left them feeling uncared for, ignored, frustrated, and humiliated. Women articulate experiences of hunger that reflect both a deprivation of adequate food and a rationing of humane attentions. These punishing perceptions may inhibit the efforts of social service and health providers to engage incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women in care. In contrast, exceptional participant narratives about positive, non-punishing food experiences suggest that ameliorated food systems could improve the lived experience of incarceration and promote the engagement in services that is needed to improve the outcomes of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women.

scholarly journals Good Intentions: Women’s Narratives of Post-Release Anticipatory Desistance in the Context of Historical and Contemporary Disadvantage and Trauma

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (5) ◽  
pp. 519-544
Author(s):  
Rachel Hale
Keyword(s):  
Incarcerated Women ◽  
Structural Barriers ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Formerly Incarcerated ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Women's Narratives ◽  
Perspective Drawing ◽  
Male Experience ◽  
Formerly Incarcerated Women ◽  
Criminalized Women

Desistance theorizing has concentrated on the male experience resulting in relatively less knowledge about how criminalized women negotiate nonoffending, particularly from a qualitative perspective. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with eight formerly incarcerated women in Victoria, Australia, this research explores the anticipation of desistance in the context of experiences preceding and following incarceration. The findings highlight how individual-level intentions to cease offending can be eclipsed by historical and ongoing disadvantage and trauma. In emphasizing the gendered socio-structural barriers affecting women’s desistance efforts, this article contributes to a small, yet important, emerging discourse—a form of critical feminist desistance.

Empowered Caring: An Ethical Framework for Participatory Action Research

2008 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 50-55
Keyword(s):  
Action Research ◽  
Participatory Action Research ◽  
Ethic Of Care ◽  
Incarcerated Women ◽  
Ethical Framework ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Participatory Action ◽  
Formerly Incarcerated ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Formerly Incarcerated Women

Participatory action research (PAR), as a “new paradigm” approach, involves additional ethical and political issues beyond those encountered in empirical and interpretive models of science. This paper describes PAR methodology, a comprehensive ethical framework that is inclusive of the ethic of care and virtue, and applications with formerly incarcerated women.

Empowered Caring: An Ethical Framework for Participatory Action Research

2008 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 74-78
Author(s):  
Mickey L. Parsons, ◽  
Catherine Robichaux, ◽  
Carmen Warner-Robbins,
Keyword(s):  
Action Research ◽  
Participatory Action Research ◽  
Ethic Of Care ◽  
Incarcerated Women ◽  
Ethical Framework ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Participatory Action ◽  
Formerly Incarcerated ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Formerly Incarcerated Women

Participatory action research (PAR), as a “new paradigm” approach, involves additional ethical and political issues beyond those encountered in empirical and interpretive models of science. This paper describes PAR methodology, a comprehensive ethical framework that is inclusive of the ethic of care and virtue, and applications with formerly incarcerated women.

What Do We Mean By a “Hard-to-reach” Population? Legitimacy Versus Precarity as Barriers to Access

2021 ◽  
pp. 004912412199553
Author(s):  
Rachel Ellis
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Structural Barriers ◽  
Hidden Populations ◽  
Formerly Incarcerated ◽  
Institutional Legitimacy ◽  
Barriers To Access ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Women's Prison ◽  
Formerly Incarcerated Women ◽  
Two Populations

Numerous articles and textbooks advise qualitative researchers on accessing “hard-to-reach” or “hidden” populations. In this article, I compare two studies that I conducted with justice-involved women in the United States: a yearlong ethnography inside a state women’s prison and an interview study with formerly incarcerated women. Although these two populations are interconnected—and both are widely deemed hard-to-reach—the barriers to access differed. In the prison study, hard-to-reach reflected an issue of institutional legitimacy, in which researchers must demonstrate themselves and their proposed study as legible, appropriate, and worthy to organizational gatekeepers. In the reentry study, hard-to-reach reflected an issue of structural precarity, in which researchers must navigate the everyday vulnerabilities of research participants’ social position to ensure the study is inclusive and feasible. Juxtaposing these two experiences, I propose greater nuance to the term hard-to-reach such that researchers may proactively address institutional and structural barriers to access.

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