Summary
Women’s imprisonment, social control and the carceral state – an interdisciplinary study of the experiences of detention
Prison research in Germany is largely of a quantitative nature and overwhelmingly based on male prisoners who make up the vast majority of the prison estate. The fact that women are far fewer in number can pose a variety of challenges for prison administrations, often resulting in less favourable treatment as compared to imprisoned men. WISCA responds to the Council of Europe’s call for more research and gender-sensitive monitoring which is attuned to the potential compounding of problems women face in prison. Prison research is mainly based on generalisations from mainstream male prisoners (Howe 1994; Loeber et al 2007) and women have remained largely absent from studies into key penological issues such as legitimacy and order (Bosworth 1996; Liebling 2009). Female prisoners are particularly interesting, however, precisely because many reform agendas are trialled on this relatively small and seemingly more manageable group (Kubiak et al. 2017). While attention has been directed towards the Nordic countries in search for penal reform ideas (Pratt & Eriksson 2015), central European countries have been overlooked despite low imprisonment rates; and little is known about prisoners’ experiences in Germany due to a lack of qualitative research. Further, carceral geography as a newly emerging discipline has so far seen no German data, so this project will provide an expansion of carceral geography and qualitative criminology into the German-speaking interdisciplinary field. Using mainly qualitative research methods with some quantitative elements, WISCA will address these gaps in scholarship by focussing on the experiences of female prisoners in order to expose the dynamics of the penal state, the texture of imprisonment as lived and experienced, and wider networks of social control beyond release.
Prison research in Germany is largely of a quantitative nature and overwhelmingly based on male prisoners who make up the vast majority of the prison estate. The fact that women are far fewer in number can pose a variety of challenges for prison administrations, often resulting in less favourable treatment as compared to imprisoned men. WISCA responds to the Council of Europe’s call for more research and gender-sensitive monitoring which is attuned to the potential compounding of problems women face in prison. Prison research is mainly based on generalisations from mainstream male prisoners (Howe 1994; Loeber et al 2007) and women have remained largely absent from studies into key penological issues such as legitimacy and order (Bosworth 1996; Liebling 2009). Female prisoners are particularly interesting, however, precisely because many reform agendas are trialled on this relatively small and seemingly more manageable group (Kubiak et al. 2017). While attention has been directed towards the Nordic countries in search for penal reform ideas (Pratt & Eriksson 2015), central European countries have been overlooked despite low imprisonment rates; and little is known about prisoners’ experiences in Germany due to a lack of qualitative research. Further, carceral geography as a newly emerging discipline has so far seen no German data, so this project will provide an expansion of carceral geography and qualitative criminology into the German-speaking interdisciplinary field. Using mainly qualitative research methods with some quantitative elements, WISCA will address these gaps in scholarship by focussing on the experiences of female prisoners in order to expose the dynamics of the penal state, the texture of imprisonment as lived and experienced, and wider networks of social control beyond release.
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| Web resources: | https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101025881 |
| Start date: | 01-09-2021 |
| End date: | 10-10-2026 |
| Total budget - Public funding: | 174 806,41 Euro - 174 806,00 Euro |
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Original description
Women’s imprisonment, social control and the carceral state – an interdisciplinary study of the experiences of detentionPrison research in Germany is largely of a quantitative nature and overwhelmingly based on male prisoners who make up the vast majority of the prison estate. The fact that women are far fewer in number can pose a variety of challenges for prison administrations, often resulting in less favourable treatment as compared to imprisoned men. WISCA responds to the Council of Europe’s call for more research and gender-sensitive monitoring which is attuned to the potential compounding of problems women face in prison. Prison research is mainly based on generalisations from mainstream male prisoners (Howe 1994; Loeber et al 2007) and women have remained largely absent from studies into key penological issues such as legitimacy and order (Bosworth 1996; Liebling 2009). Female prisoners are particularly interesting, however, precisely because many reform agendas are trialled on this relatively small and seemingly more manageable group (Kubiak et al. 2017). While attention has been directed towards the Nordic countries in search for penal reform ideas (Pratt & Eriksson 2015), central European countries have been overlooked despite low imprisonment rates; and little is known about prisoners’ experiences in Germany due to a lack of qualitative research. Further, carceral geography as a newly emerging discipline has so far seen no German data, so this project will provide an expansion of carceral geography and qualitative criminology into the German-speaking interdisciplinary field. Using mainly qualitative research methods with some quantitative elements, WISCA will address these gaps in scholarship by focussing on the experiences of female prisoners in order to expose the dynamics of the penal state, the texture of imprisonment as lived and experienced, and wider networks of social control beyond release.
Status
SIGNEDCall topic
MSCA-IF-2020Update Date
28-04-2024
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