Gendering prison and immigration detention policies

Abstract

Public policies have gender implications regardless their alleged “gender-neutral” formulation and implementation. Prisons and immigration detention facilities are gendered institutions, wherein policies have differential impacts in women, men and gender minorities. However, the gender impacts of the emerging and constantly growing punitive and coercive responses to social changes, economic recessions and global mobility have been traditionally ignored by most policymakers and researchers committed to gender equality efforts. Only a handful of countries have introduced gender equality policies in detention facilities, but most of them continue neglecting the gender inequalities and discriminations confinement institutions produce. Therefore, this panel seeks to delve into the gender dynamics and implications arising from the implementation of coercive policies in contexts where gender equality has been either wholly or largely ignored. While gender issues may be disregarded during policy formulation, during implementation some actors (state and non-state actors) mobilize and reproduce gender stereotypes and beliefs while, at the same time, other actors combat against gender inequalities in different and, sometimes, contradictory ways. In parallel, emerging practices from below, including those led by detained women themselves, can also reshape gender conceptualizations, contributing to progress toward gender equality and emancipation. This panel will examine detention policies from the Global North and the Global South to contribute to the efforts already initiated to explore a highly overlook sector of the public intervention from a feminist and gender approach: penality policy. It contributes to expanding a new line of critical policy studies that focuses on punitive and coercive power of the state from a feminist approach and that has been framed in the concept of “feminist penality policy in action”. We define feminist penality policy as a broad policy sector comprising public initiatives that try to reduce gender inequality and discrimination within state actions involving penal and coercive components.

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