An imprisoning gaze

Abstract

This article examines how correctional systems absorb feminist-inspired reformist discourses that focus upon women's victimization as a ‘pathway’ to incarceration. Through the absorption process the concept of gender loses its socio-economic and political resonance, centering instead the psychological effects of gender oppression. A psychological notion of gender has been used to individualize and pathologize criminalized women through prison programming and is linked with notions of ‘risk’ to re-offend. I reflect upon the role of evidence-based practice (EBP) in exacerbating epistemic problems related to the subjectivity of the ‘risky victim.’ Moving beyond this conceptualization, I suggest the importance of an analysis which draws connections across spaces of confinement and challenges the very role and practices of prisons as examples of racialized and gendered violence themselves.