Women in Prisons

Before being locked up, incarcerated women are more marginalized, have higher rates of mental illness and substance misuse, and have more often experienced physical or sexual victimization than incarcerated men. Women experience prison differently. However, much of what we know about women’s experiences comes from research in the United States and the United Kingdom, providing little insight into women prisoners’ experiences elsewhere. This is unfortunate for many reasons; policy makers wishing to develop evidence-based initiatives, for example, cannot know whether what seems to work in one place is appropriate in another. Case studies from Canada, Norway, and Mexico reveal similarities and substantial differences in women’s experiences. Incarcerated women in all three places have histories of victimization and identify their children as their primary motivator to desist from crime and drug use. However, how they relate to programming, prison work, accommodation, and prison food varies greatly. How women in these three different countries experience imprisonment is related to conditions of their lives outside of prison and to the nature, extent, and quality of available social welfare services. Researchers need to pay much closer attention to geographical and contextual differences when assessing the conditions, challenges, and prospects of women in prisons.