Diagnosing Institutional Violence

Abstract

Chapter 2 examines the resistance of women prisoners and their supporters’ opposition to the use of medicalized behavior-modification regimes in prisons during the 1970s. The Coalition to Stop Institutional Violence, a broad-based, feminist-led alliance in Massachusetts that included advocates for the rights of prisoners and mental patients, blocked the construction of a locked treatment center for dissident and gender-nonconforming women prisoners who were labeled “deviant” and “violent.” Activists criticized the “prison/psychiatric state” for perpetrating violence against women while advocating alternative approaches to safety, accountability, and healing.