scholarly journals The Gender Correctional Machine: Institutional Mechanisms that Reinforce a Patriarchal Gender Order in Correctional Facilities

Perceptions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Micaela Robalino
Keyword(s):  
Regulatory Mechanism ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Correctional Facilities ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Male Gaze ◽  
Vocational Programs ◽  
Prison Industrial Complex ◽  
Do So

Mass incarceration is a feminist struggle. Not only are women the fastest growing population in correctional facilities in the United States but they also face institutional regulations that aim at "correcting" their gender and sexual "deviance." Correction, within women's correctional facilities, refers to the structural attempt to enforce a gendered, class-based, and racialized order. The mechanism that allows the gender correctional machine to be enacted functions through two branches: correctional industries and library content. This study examines the extent to which regulatory programs, such as limited labor options and libraries, are actually constructed through male-gaze-dominated norms. By looking at the connection between vocational programs and the prison-industrial complex, it is evident that labor-oriented programs not only exploit women but do so in a gendered way. Low-waged, traditionally feminine, and potentially racialized training within the facilities showcase the regulatory mechanism to keep women "were they belong." Furthermore, this study imports the theoretical lens of Laura Mulvey's notion of the male gaze into the area of sociology of law, and seeks to understand how prison libraries enforce patriarchal norms. By looking at denied and permitted library publications in the Philadelphia Department of Prisons, this study shows that the male gaze functions as a normalizing and correcting force in the ways that gender and sexuality are visually portrayed in publications' covers. Thus, the study unveils the regulatory mechanisms of the gender correctional machine, and proposes radical resistance as an alternative to it.

When Temporal Orbits Collide: Embodied Trans Temporalities in U.S. Prisons

Somatechnics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rae Rosenberg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Prison Industrial Complex ◽  
Trans Women ◽  
And Control

This paper explores trans temporalities through the experiences of incarcerated trans feminine persons in the United States. The Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) has received increased attention for its disproportionate containment of trans feminine persons, notably trans women of colour. As a system of domination and control, the PIC uses disciplinary and heteronormative time to dominate the bodies and identities of transgender prisoners by limiting the ways in which they can express and experience their identified and embodied genders. By analyzing three case studies from my research with incarcerated trans feminine persons, this paper illustrates how temporality is complexly woven through trans feminine prisoners' experiences of transitioning in the PIC. For incarcerated trans feminine persons, the interruption, refusal, or permission of transitioning in the PIC invites several gendered pasts into a body's present and places these temporalities in conversation with varying futures as the body's potential. Analyzing trans temporalities reveals time as layered through gender, inviting multiple pasts and futures to circulate around and through the body's present in ways that can be both harmful to, and necessary for, the assertion and survival of trans feminine identities in the PIC.

scholarly journals Barriers to Sustainability in Poor Marginalized Communities in the United States: The Criminal Justice, the Prison-Industrial Complex and Foster Care Systems

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muriel Adams ◽  
Sonja Klinsky ◽  
Nalini Chhetri
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foster Care ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
The United States ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Prison Industrial Complex ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Persistent Problem ◽  
Marginalized Communities ◽  
Care Systems

In the United States of America, 2.2 million people are incarcerated in public and private facilities and over 700,000 are released yearly back to their home communities. Almost half are rearrested within a year. These problems have been excluded from mainstream sustainability narratives, despite their serious implications for sustainability. This paper addresses how the criminal justice, prison-industrial complex and foster care systems negatively impact these communities and families. To comprehend the system links, a sustainability lens is used to examine and address interlinking system impacts obstructing achievement of sustainability and the necessary community characteristics for building sustainable communities. Communities characterized by environmental degradation, economic despair and social dysfunction are trapped in unsustainability. Therefore, a system-of-communities framework is proposed which examines the circumstances that bring about prison cycling which devastates family and community cohesion and social networking, also negatively affecting the ability of other communities to become truly sustainable. We contend that a fully integrated social, economic and environmental approach to a major, complex, persistent problem as it relates to poor, marginalized communities faced with mass incarceration and recidivism can begin creating sustainable conditions. Further, we articulate ways sustainability narratives could be changed to engage with core challenges impeding these communities.

Incarceration and Rupture: The Past in the Present

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Brace
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
The United States ◽  
Blind Spot ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Prison Industrial Complex ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Status ◽  
Racial Slavery

This chapter focuses on the prison industrial complex in the United States to ask again about what gets remembered and how, to take us back to the question of what happens to a manumitted slave, and to revisit the figure of the slave as an uncanny object in the blind spot of modernity. It contests the sharp divide between past and present that lies behind the discourse of new slavery and focuses not on rupture, but on the continuities and persistent connections between the racial slavery of the past and the incarceration of the present. It looks at a past that refuses to pass away by exploring the meanings of imprisonment, the prison itself, the border regime and the status of felons and prisoners as outsiders, shut out of civil society.

Race, Gender, and the Prison Industrial Complex

Meridians ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (S1) ◽  
pp. 87-111
Author(s):  
Angela Y. Davis ◽  
Cassandra Shaylor
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Prison Industrial Complex ◽  
Reproductive Control ◽  
Women's Prisons ◽  
Human Rights Organizations ◽  
Medical Neglect ◽  
Control Loss

Abstract Despite the transnational growth of the prison industrial complex and the rapid expansion of the carceral state in the United States and beyond, violence against women in prisons has remained largely invisible. Reports from people inside prisons, amplified by activists on the outside and international human rights organizations documenting prison conditions, highlight rampant violations of human rights behind walls. The gendered nature of racism, which fuels the growth of the prison industrial complex, results in experiences of violence, including medical neglect, sexual abuse, lack of reproductive control, loss of parental rights, and the devastating effects of isolation, that manifest in particular ways in women’s prisons. Advocates who are challenging conditions inside increasingly are connecting with activists across the globe and organizing their efforts to resist this violence in concert with a broader resistance to carcerality overall.

The Mass Incarceration of Undocumented Latinos/as in the Prison-Immigration Industrial Complex

2016 ◽  
pp. 274-295
Author(s):  
Roberto Jose Velasquez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Mental Health Professionals ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Black Experience ◽  
Assessment And Treatment ◽  
Specific Assessment ◽  
Current Mass

In this chapter, the authors discuss the current mass incarceration of Latinos/as in the United States. While Latinos/as have always been overrepresented in the criminal justice system, especially in relation to their population size, the number of Latinos/as, especially those who are undocumented, is now increasing at epidemic proportions in prison. Paralleling the Black experience about mass incarceration, which has its historical roots in slavery, the authors discuss impact of mass incarceration on the Latino/a community, and how mass incarceration places the Latino/a population at-risk for destruction of its community, most notably the family. The authors, who are primarily mental health professionals, share their concerns about how mass incarceration is tearing at the foundation of this community as it has in the African American community and is likely to have negative long-term, and perhaps permanent, effects that are yet to be known. While it is beyond of the scope of the chapter to discuss the specific assessment and treatment of Latino/a persons affected by mass incarceration, the authors do focus on problems that are arising in this community as a result of persons, especially parents, being incarceration because of undocumented status in the United States.

Ephemeral Value and Disused Commodities

Life of Paper ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Luk
Keyword(s):  
Labor Force ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The Other ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Social Force ◽  
Prison Industrial Complex ◽  
Capitalist Production ◽  
The One ◽  
Apparent Evidence

Chapter Five clarifies theoretically the overlaps and distinctions between problematizing contemporary mass incarceration in terms of capitalist production, on the one hand, and in terms of social reproduction, on the other. Greater precision in this regard opens out the question rather than assumption of “racial” significance and signification today, specifically with reference to the “prison industrial complex” as a process of genocide—systematic extermination through arrested life and social incapacitation. Chapter Five concludes by examining the manipulation of prison mail in acts of retaliation and torture: wherein punishment does not operate primarily to discipline a labor force but to deaden those who refuse to be neutralized. Considering the letter as sign of living potential in this context, this chapter ultimately views the violence it magnetizes not as the negation but as the most apparent “evidence” of the letter’s social force.

scholarly journals Out of Space: Securitization, Intimacy, and New Research Challenges in Post-2009 Iran

2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 515-520 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shirin Saeidi ◽  
Paola Rivetti
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
The United States ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Prison Industrial Complex ◽  
Security Forces ◽  
Gender Nonconforming ◽  
Males And Females ◽  
New Research ◽  
The Impact

In post-2009 Iran, not only is space gendered for a variety of reasons ranging from customs to state intervention, but also public space has become less accessible and secluded for security purposes. To securitize the state or replace a sense of trust with that of suspicion, states blend the gendering of space with the architecture of seclusion. In the United States, for instance, the separation of males and females in the prison industrial complex includes seclusion of bodies and often subjects gender-nonconforming people, immigrants, and those with HIV to disproportionate levels of physical danger. In Iran, architectural adjustments with the aim of seclusion have significantly increased since the 2009 protests. In Tehran, for instance, shisha shops in the mountains, which used to be common sites of leisure, are randomly raided by security forces. As a result, participating in such spaces means having to hide in the back areas to engage in an activity that not too long ago was legal. It follows that the combination of gendering and seclusion of space disrupts the formation of organic relationships and generates real, falsely stimulated, and contested intimacies. How we approach intimacies in this complicated situation determines in important ways the impact that this new spatial scheme will have on our research agenda, analysis, and perhaps even safety.

Imprisoning Pregnant and Parenting Women: A Focus on Social Justice, Equal Rights, and Equality

2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 195-201
Author(s):  
JaNeen Cross
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
African American Women ◽  
Care Delivery ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Health Approach ◽  
Correctional Facilities ◽  
Promising Alternative ◽  
Grand Challenges ◽  
Pregnant And Parenting Women

Abstract The mass incarceration of pregnant and parenting women is a serious problem in the United States. African American women and other women of color are most burdened by mass incarceration. This article outlines the problems with health care delivery in correctional facilities. It is argued that correctional facilities are not the place for pregnant and parenting women. A policy focus is needed that takes a public health approach. There are promising alternative policies that integrate a public health approach, improve treatment outcomes for women, and provide an alternative to incarceration. This problem is discussed through the lens of the Grand Challenges for Social Work. Alternative policies and programs are recommended that align with a public health approach and directly target the pathways for imprisonment. This issue requires a call for policy action to challenge the inequality and social justices inherent in this problem. The grand challenges offer a blueprint in which to develop effective policy approaches.

Carceral Trauma at the Intersections of Race, Class, and Gender

2021 ◽  
pp. 72-85
Author(s):  
Cassandra D. Little
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Justice System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Prison Industrial Complex ◽  
And Gender

This chapter will provide a firsthand analysis of one woman's journey through the prison industrial complex. The intent is to bring the readers proximate to how trauma intersects with incarceration, gender, and race. The goal is to challenge our criminal justice system's need to over-criminalize and over-incarcerate women at alarming rates. Since 1980 the number of women in United States prisons has increased by more than 700%. These rates of incarceration of women have outpaced men by more than 50%. By drawing upon lived experience interacting with the United States Criminal Justice System and empirical data, the author will provide evidence that will argue that the experience of being incarcerated is traumatic and dehumanizing for many, but even more counterproductive for women.

The Mass Incarceration of Undocumented Latinos/as in the Prison-Immigration Industrial Complex

2019 ◽  
pp. 494-510
Author(s):  
Roberto Jose Velasquez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Mental Health Professionals ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Black Experience ◽  
Assessment And Treatment ◽  
Specific Assessment ◽  
Current Mass

In this chapter, the authors discuss the current mass incarceration of Latinos/as in the United States. While Latinos/as have always been overrepresented in the criminal justice system, especially in relation to their population size, the number of Latinos/as, especially those who are undocumented, is now increasing at epidemic proportions in prison. Paralleling the Black experience about mass incarceration, which has its historical roots in slavery, the authors discuss impact of mass incarceration on the Latino/a community, and how mass incarceration places the Latino/a population at-risk for destruction of its community, most notably the family. The authors, who are primarily mental health professionals, share their concerns about how mass incarceration is tearing at the foundation of this community as it has in the African American community and is likely to have negative long-term, and perhaps permanent, effects that are yet to be known. While it is beyond of the scope of the chapter to discuss the specific assessment and treatment of Latino/a persons affected by mass incarceration, the authors do focus on problems that are arising in this community as a result of persons, especially parents, being incarceration because of undocumented status in the United States.

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