Locked Behind Gendered Bars: Mapping Emotions and the Regulation of Gender in Female Prison Spaces

• In Event: Queer Criminology Research in Prisons

Abstract

The recent outrage over the allocation of transgender prisoners in the UK has demonstrated a societal and institutional preoccupation with gender and space, which calls for a more comprehensive understanding of how gender is enacted and regulated in custody. This is especially relevant in female prisons, where institutional modes of control have been criticised for attempting to “refeminise” offenders. The current study investigates how the female prison space reproduces heteronormative practices of social control, to the detriment of both cisgender and gender non-conforming individuals. In an attempt to bridge concepts from Queer Criminology and Carceral Geography, this project engages in an emotion mapping exercise with 10 individuals with lived experience of the female prison system in the UK, exploring how forms of embodied carcerality, and the emotions and memories associated with the carceral space, can impact notions of gendered subjectivity. By making space for a queer exploration of identities and experiences within the carceral, findings shed a light on the queer potential to transgress and subvert institutionalised spaces, and to promote a radical and abolitionist outlook towards the future, where the utility and persistence of carceral practices are questioned in light of the disproportionate harm they cause.

Author

• Rachele Girardi, University of Greenwich