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This chapter explores the work tasks assigned to women prisoners in Myanmar. The official intention of such tasks is to help rehabilitate women in prison by providing them with skills to enhance their future employability outside the prison. The chapter critically inspects this proposition based on an ethnographic case study involving interviews with previously incarcerated women. The women’s narratives allow us to juxtapose the actual practice of prison work with the aims of rehabilitation and to critically examine the connection between the types of work tasks given, the distribution of tasks to different kinds of prisoners, and the potential of such work to enhance employability post-release. We find that while prison work is provided ostensibly to prepare and equip women with skills as a form of vocational training, in fact, it rather serves the interests of private companies and the Myanmar Prison Department. We argue that the types of work are intentionally and unintentionally exploitative. The challenges faced by women concerning prison work are highlighted, and the authors propose that the Myanmar Prison Department must commit to more genuine livelihood training options that are not exploitative, but meaningful and orientated toward the employability of women prisoners upon their release.

This research explores the subjective health experiences of women incarcerated in a provincial detention center in Ottawa, Canada.

Narrative interviews conducted with 16 previously incarcerated women were analyzed to explore how health issues shaped their experiences in detention.

Women identified a set of practices and conditions that negatively impacted health, including the denial of medication, medical treatment, and healthcare, limited prenatal healthcare, and damaged health caused by poor living conditions.

Findings suggest that structural health problems emerge in penal environments where healthcare is provided by the same agency responsible for incarceration. The incompatibility between the mandates of incarceration and healthcare suggests that responsibility for institutional healthcare should be transferred to provincial healthcare bodies.

This research responds to the lack of research on carceral health experiences within both penal scholarship and medical sociology, particularly in relation to women and those confined in jails.

Purpose: This chapter illuminates the ways in which the coherent arrangements of prisons contribute to variation in implementation, functioning, and consequences of a purportedly gender neutral policy, the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), between women’s and men’s prisons.

Methodology/Approach: Guided by grounded theory, two waves of qualitative interviews with inmates, staff, and volunteers at two Midwest women’s prisons were conducted for a total of 61 interviews. Interviews were supplemented with archival data obtained from state historical archives, news outlets, and the Iowa Department of Corrections, as well as participant observation of prisoner advocacy group meetings and the Iowa Board of Corrections’ meetings, and a content analysis of an online discussion forum for correctional officers.

Findings: We find that the gender subtext of prisons shapes the way the PREA is perceived and implemented. Overall, we argue that due to founding logics that differentially shaped the coherent arrangements of men’s and women’s prisons, blanket policies operate differently in these institutions. The gender subtext of prisons, specifically the structural arrangements and cultural processes within women’s and men’s prisons form different landscapes in which the PREA is perceived, enforced, and responded to.

Practical Implications: Given these findings, we call for gender-informed policy that takes gender subtext into account but that also avoids the trap of statistical discrimination present in some gender responsive policies.

Around 7% of the female prison population are pregnant (Albertson, O'Keeffe, Lessing-Turner, Burke & Renfrew, 2014; Kennedy, Marshall, Parkinson, Delap, & Abbott, 2016; Prison Reform Trust, 2019). However, although recent years have witnessed growing academic interest in relation to mothering and imprisonment, limited attention has been paid to exploring the experiences of pregnancy for women serving a custodial sentence. Combining health and criminological research, this chapter offers a unique perspective of women's accounts of pregnancy and imprisonment, highlighting the specific challenges faced by pregnant women in negotiating the prison environment, whilst also illustrating the adaptive strategies adopted to cope with pregnancy and new motherhood in the context of imprisonment.

To date, intersectional feminist criminological enquiry concerned with exploring junctions of gender and ethnicity amongst incarcerated women, has mainly come from studies undertaken in western nations. In this chapter, we present findings from research undertaken in Thailand that explored incarcerated ethnic minority women’s backgrounds, situational contexts surrounding their criminalization and criminal justice system experiences, with particular attention paid to women’s time in prison. Our purpose was to examine how gender and ethnicity intersected, impacting the lived experiences of criminalized ethnic minority women before and during their incarceration. Findings revealed the ways in which these women are marginalized inside and outside prison walls. On the outside, the women struggled with patriarchal systems of power, both within and beyond their communities. They were subjugated as women and by discourses of ethnic othering. Under-education, poverty, living with state, community, familial and intimate partner violence, trauma, and other adversity were key aspects of the women’s pre-prison lives and created the contexts from which they came into conflict with the law. The women faced challenges in accessing justice and, once imprisoned, gender and ethnicity intersected in several domains, to impact their carceral experiences.

In this chapter, we examine historical and contemporary debates about the position and situation of women in Myanmar (and to a lesser extent gender and sexual minorities). Specific reference is made to the patriarchal character of the military coup of February 1, 2021, and the emergent forms of feminist resistance that turned social norms inside out in protest against lethal repression. The way women, as well as sexual and gender minorities, are unequally positioned and face structural and social discrimination in society serves to contextualize our presentation of the findings of a collaborative case-study conducted in 2018 on issues pertaining to gender and imprisonment in Myanmar, based mainly on interviews with former prisoners in three research sites. The aim was to generate field-based knowledge about the carceral experiences of women and LGBTQIA+ persons in Myanmar – focusing on their needs and vulnerabilities, their capacities and rights, their relationships and identities, and their modes of survival as they encounter penal regimes. Findings are summarized focusing on former prisoners’ experiences of legal bias; perspectives on encounters with the criminal justice system; the inadequacy of health provision (posed as lethal neglect); and the way certain behaviors and identities are criminalized. The chapter concludes with some reflections on the degree to which there might still be space for critical scholarship in the post-coup world and poses some questions for future research.

This chapter contributes to literature illustrating accounting’s impact in making things governable, thinkable, and knowable. Although critical accounting research has been exemplary in examining consequences of its practices on vulnerable populations, there has been a scarcity of investigation regarding incarcerated populace. This chapter begins the process of exploring neoliberal discipline, rule, and calculative techniques intersecting with gender, race, and class in prisons. For this disenfranchised population the construction of the “feared and deviant other” is of particular significance. A crime-control dynamic mythologizing and dreading the criminal has become so institutionalized that discourses justifying surveillance, dominance, and injustice have become normalized, in which accounting takes part. We are particularly interested in the impact for incarcerated women who are shackled, sterilized, and at risk, modes of control that are extraordinary. As such, the dynamics of knowledge creation challenges us to ask what initiates visibility and transformation. We suggest the narratives of incarcerated women are potential devices in this process, and add to an emerging literature revealing the emancipatory possibility of alternative, or counter-accounts. Seen as tools of resistance and change, we give voice to their narratives. As their accounts demonstrate resilience and power, we reject an inevitability of silence. Rather, these critical accounts provide pathways for thinking differently and aspiring for a change, as the social never disappears.

Some countries prohibit the imposition of life imprisonment on women but allow it for men for the same offence (e.g. Albania, Azerbaijan, Russia and Belarus). In Khamtokhu and Aksenchik v. Russia (2017) the European Court of Human Rights rejected the claim that it was discriminatory to punish two Russian men convicted of murder to life imprisonment. Other than a handful of legal commentaries there have been no in-depth analyses of the case, in particular on the dangers of using gender stereotyping to limit life imprisonment. To address this gap, this chapter draws on criminological works on the gendered experience of life imprisonment, legal analyses of perpetual incarceration under human rights law and ECHR case law on gender stereotyping and on life imprisonment. This study critically discusses the Court’s assessment of gender stereotypes in the context of life imprisonment and considers whether its approach constitutes any improvement for women. In so doing, it illuminates how well-intended efforts to curtail some extreme forms of penal practices such as perpetual incarceration may have unintended and perverse consequences for women specifically and the landscape of punishment more generally.