“I'm Just Not Good in Relationships“

Abstract

This article examines how risk discourses carry specific gendered meanings within the context of women-centered correctional practices. Based on interviews with 52 women who served federal prison sentences in Canada, the author examines how abused women are constructed as violent and the discursive and practical implications of this construction. Feminist-informed victimization narratives merge with correctional risk discourses to govern criminalized women's relationships once they are released into the community. Correctional policy and programming encourages self-regulatory strategies that constitute abused women as at risk of being violent in the context of relationships.