The Just Prison? Women’s Prison Reform and the Figure of the “Offender-as-Victim” in Germany
During the 1990s, the Berlin women’s prison was reformed to do justice to female inmates. This redesigning of space and programs was intended to meet women-specific conditions and needs. The present paper engages with this prison reform as transformation in the name of gender justice. Based on inte...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Brock University
2024-04-01
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| Series: | Studies in Social Justice |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.library.brocku.ca/index.php/SSJ/article/view/4343 |
| _version_ | 1797220479353749504 |
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| author | Friederike Faust Klara Nagel |
| author_facet | Friederike Faust Klara Nagel |
| author_sort | Friederike Faust |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description |
During the 1990s, the Berlin women’s prison was reformed to do justice to female inmates. This redesigning of space and programs was intended to meet women-specific conditions and needs. The present paper engages with this prison reform as transformation in the name of gender justice. Based on interviews with prison reformers, criminologists, and policymakers, as well as on the analysis of historical documents, we illuminate how a specific figure of the “criminalized woman” helps to translate the abstract notion of social justice into situated practice. From the 1970s onward, a new knowledge of women’s crime would emerge: it constituted female offenders as victims of patriarchal oppression and victimization, allowing the prison system to be criticized as androcentric and discriminatory against women. We argue that subsequent reform pursued gender justice in the form of difference-based, gender-responsive programs and spaces targeting individual inmates’ character and mindset. Thereby, the reformers’ initial critique of social justice would be unintentionally depoliticized and so gender, economic, and political inequalities remained unaddressed. Our purpose is hence twofold: first, to review the recent history of women’s incarceration in Germany, and second, to add a social justice focus to the international criminological debate on gender, prison, and reform.
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| first_indexed | 2024-04-24T12:50:12Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-9ab5c6cb7bd3497a8ba67affbe704c1b |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1911-4788 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-24T12:50:12Z |
| publishDate | 2024-04-01 |
| publisher | Brock University |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Studies in Social Justice |
| spelling | doaj.art-9ab5c6cb7bd3497a8ba67affbe704c1b2024-04-06T06:00:00ZengBrock UniversityStudies in Social Justice1911-47882024-04-0118210.26522/ssj.v18i2.4343The Just Prison? Women’s Prison Reform and the Figure of the “Offender-as-Victim” in GermanyFriederike Faust0https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3777-597XKlara Nagel1https://orcid.org/0009-0000-0102-2533Georg-August-University Göttingen, GermanyHumboldt-Universität zu Berlin During the 1990s, the Berlin women’s prison was reformed to do justice to female inmates. This redesigning of space and programs was intended to meet women-specific conditions and needs. The present paper engages with this prison reform as transformation in the name of gender justice. Based on interviews with prison reformers, criminologists, and policymakers, as well as on the analysis of historical documents, we illuminate how a specific figure of the “criminalized woman” helps to translate the abstract notion of social justice into situated practice. From the 1970s onward, a new knowledge of women’s crime would emerge: it constituted female offenders as victims of patriarchal oppression and victimization, allowing the prison system to be criticized as androcentric and discriminatory against women. We argue that subsequent reform pursued gender justice in the form of difference-based, gender-responsive programs and spaces targeting individual inmates’ character and mindset. Thereby, the reformers’ initial critique of social justice would be unintentionally depoliticized and so gender, economic, and political inequalities remained unaddressed. Our purpose is hence twofold: first, to review the recent history of women’s incarceration in Germany, and second, to add a social justice focus to the international criminological debate on gender, prison, and reform. https://journals.library.brocku.ca/index.php/SSJ/article/view/4343prisongenderGermanysocial justicecriminology |
| spellingShingle | Friederike Faust Klara Nagel The Just Prison? Women’s Prison Reform and the Figure of the “Offender-as-Victim” in Germany Studies in Social Justice prison gender Germany social justice criminology |
| title | The Just Prison? Women’s Prison Reform and the Figure of the “Offender-as-Victim” in Germany |
| title_full | The Just Prison? Women’s Prison Reform and the Figure of the “Offender-as-Victim” in Germany |
| title_fullStr | The Just Prison? Women’s Prison Reform and the Figure of the “Offender-as-Victim” in Germany |
| title_full_unstemmed | The Just Prison? Women’s Prison Reform and the Figure of the “Offender-as-Victim” in Germany |
| title_short | The Just Prison? Women’s Prison Reform and the Figure of the “Offender-as-Victim” in Germany |
| title_sort | just prison women s prison reform and the figure of the offender as victim in germany |
| topic | prison gender Germany social justice criminology |
| url | https://journals.library.brocku.ca/index.php/SSJ/article/view/4343 |
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