Prison Activism on Trial: Canadian Feminists Mobilize against the Carceral State during the 1970s

Abstract

This article uses the 1978–79 trial of Vancouver prison activists and feminists Betsy Wood and Gay Hoon as a means of exploring the changing nature of feminist prison activism in Canada during the 1970s. The trial is placed in its historical context, with a focus on contemporary discussions about reform, abolition, and the carceral state, particularly in the feminist press and feminist organizations. The Wood/Hoon trial is explored through an analysis of both media accounts and archival records, including the very few records of the trial that survived. Discussion surrounding the trial shows the changing nature of feminist thinking about prisons: older feminist traditions of “helping” reform were challenged with new, left-wing, more radical perspectives that argued that all incarceration sustained and perpetuated forms of gender, race, and class social control.