Neoliberal Ideologies as Drivers of Women's Incarceration Rates Around the World

• In Event: 477 - Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 02. Punishment and Incarceration 2

Abstract

The alarming growth of women's imprisonment rates around the world has generated a number of theoretical explanations. We empirically examine this phenomenon by deploying Wacquant's model of neoliberal state crafting and carceral control of the socially and economically marginalized while also taking women's inequality into account. We illustrate that while country-level neoliberal infiltration correlates with an increase in women's imprisonment rates, the overall picture when it comes to the role of poverty in women's imprisonment is more nuanced than originally speculated. Ordinary least squares regressions that adjust for multiple covariates show that absolute poverty and relative poverty have differential impacts when it comes to women's incarceration rates, reflecting the gendered nature of unpaid or underpaid-labor around the world. Moreover, country level welfare expenditures deviate in their effect on women's incarceration rates from Wacquant's model. Other socioeconomic variables also illustrate surprising effects, pointing to the penal arm of the state turning to the economically marginalized women when factors such as the overall employment-to-population ratio of a country increases along with an increase in the adult literacy rates of both sexes. Our analysis extends current understanding of women's penality, informing the existing literature on the subject.

Author

• Boroka Bo, University of California-San Francisco