I Was Reborn a Prisoner: The Shifting Salience of Gender at the Prison Gate

• In Event: Women, Gender, and the Justice System

Abstract

Gender becomes volatile in highly transient situations, especially for women entering intensely masculinized environments; being propelled into prison represents such an event. From interviews with 32 incarcerated women, three discoveries provide insight into such gendering conditions. First, the moment of sentencing is a poignant point when gender becomes a distant backdrop. However ephemeral the moment, mortification of self (Goffman 1961) is so replete as to render other social identities impotent. Second, life markers of one’s “self” re-emerge; many are multi-faceted, gendered “sets of self meanings” (Rowe 2011) and are imported into the prison setting. Third, the prison-as-gender-regime presents daunting challenges to women inmates, who are at once de-feminized but disallowed access to any trace of gender power. Forthwith, gender shifts urgently to the forefront, and women employ a trying-on-gender process, determining “what works” (and not) in this new regime. Gender at once becomes connecting and alienating, and may manifest as accommodation or resistance. Benita, one of the courageous participants in this study, described her moment of mortification: “My life had died, and I was reborn a prisoner.” Until we better understand the shifting salience of gender at the prison gate, our criminal justice policies will remain bereft of women’s needs.

Authors

• Susan Williams, Kansas State University

• Edward L.W. Green, Roosevelt University