Gender equality policies confined: adopted frames in the criminal justice system in Spain

Over the last decades, several countries, such as Canada, the USA and the UK, have adopted initiatives to promote gender equality in the penal field. In Spain, it is not until the end of the first decade of the 21st Century when, as a result of the general expansion of gender equality policies in the country, the government at that time paid attention to the gender inequality and discrimination faced by women prisoners in the criminal justice system. In order to act upon this matter, in November of 2008, the government approved the first Gender Equality Action Programme between women and men in the penitentiary field. The aim of this paper is to analyze gender equality frames in the penal field, particularly, we will consider how public policies and political actors conceive and define the problem of gender inequality in the prison system, taking particular attention to the role of different actors in this process. Critical Frame Analysis (CFA) is used to examine the Gender Equality Action Programme as well as other public policies and documents. CFA is also used for analyzing transcriptions of interviews with political representatives and prison staff and parliamentary minutes. The main results show that gender equality penitentiary policies reinforce maternal and caring roles, emphasize personal dependency and low self-esteem and characterize women prisoners as “shortcomings subjects” and victims, without employing an intersectional approach. Furthermore, the close character of policy networks in the prison system, and the absence of key actors in the process, such as the feminist movement, can contribute to explain not only the main frames identified, but also the fragility of the initiatives adopted.