Sexuality in Women's Prisons

This month The Differential Association convened to discuss two articles on the issue of same-sex relationships in women’s prisons. In the first article, Pardue, Arrigo and Murphy attempt to create a taxonomy of relationship types and sexual behaviour in women’s prisons. This takes the form of a comprehensive review of the existing literature followed by recommendations. The practical benefits of this are foremost in their minds as they urge the development of a pro-active programme of sexual exploitation/victimisation preventions. The innovation of such a typology is also a useful heuristic tool for further prison researchers. The real-world application of their investigation can meaningfully contribute towards creating a safer prison environment.

Drawing on existing theorists, they state that prison sexuality is shaped by mainstream culture and layered with prison subcultures. In this model, factors intrinsic to the individual interact with factors specific to incarceration.  One imports one’s sexual identity, while it is also possible to export sexual behaviours and norms from prison on release. There is therefore a permeable boundary, represented by the walls of the prison, in which attitudes to sex are those of both the outside and the inside.

Pardue et al argue that so far, the study of sexuality in prison has been marginalised, or portrayed negatively, and that researchers working in the area have been the subject of scepticism.

Their continuum of prison sexuality reads: suppressed sexuality, autoeroticism, true homosexuality, situational homosexuality, sexual violence. Research indicates that the variety of sexual behaviours in women’s prisons is diverse, this continuum attempts to encompass all such diversities.

Suppressed sexuality, which the DA found an interesting conceptualisation, and one little considered in the context of prison sexuality, is an adaptive response to incarceration. It is categorised as the first on the continuum classification, which is correlated with a continuum of potential for aggression. While there is little research on suppressed sexuality in prison, research does exist on non-sexual relationships within prison, such as pseudofamilies and kinships which provide emotional, rather than sexual, support.

The category of autoeroticism, second on their continuum, has traditionally been a subject of moral and regulatory concern within institutions, and especially as related to women and girls. Masturbation was for decades considered an unnatural vice, and indicative of moral degeneracy or mental incompetence. Pardue et al argue from the literature that it remains a stigmatised subject within prisons.

The category of homosexuality is divided into true and situational, and the authors highlight the stigma associated with such sexuality, emanating from outside the prison as well as from within. They write that same-sex female relationships received little academic attention until the 1960s and 1970s, yet the concerns about ‘particular friendships’ between women had been a recurring feature of prison records from the nineteenth-century.

The literature has suggested that women entering prison who self-identify as homosexual are better able to adapt to prison-life and labels such as prisoner through the learned behaviour of adapting to cope with abuse and victimisation of their sexuality on the outside. The literature is also sceptical of the usefulness of a binary straight/gay categorisation (Severance, 2004), as identity is a constitutive feature which can be reshaped and fluid. Many prisoners’ first same-sex encounters occurred while in prison; these figures suggest that such activity should be thoroughly understood as another element of adapting to prison, along with the related trauma and issues some may experience. Sexuality is a heavily weighted subject, with corresponding issues of stigma, emotional response and vulnerability.

Pardue et al argue that sexual violence, the final category of their continuum, had not been studied prior to 1996. There are many potential opportunities for such violence in a prison environment; for example, persons in prison live with deprivations, which can lead to an underground bartering economy. Harmful behaviours can also occur in the daily running of prisons, through strip-searching for example. The authors divide sexual violence into the sub-categories manipulation, compliance and coercion and argue that the issues are again diverse depending on the statuses of the persons involved. For example, if one participant is a prison guard this raises pertinent issues of security, exploitation and institutional abuse. Examples of research focused on sexual violence include Struckman-Johnson and Struckman-Johnson (2006) who studied men and women in prison and found that 75% men and 57% had experienced sexual coercion more than once on at least one occasion. Blackburn, Mullings and Marquart (2008) found sexual victimisation rates were higher in the female prison population than in general population. Consideration of such issues of institutional abuse, exploitation and vulnerability are central to the safe running of prisoner regimes.

The authors highlight the key role of prison officers in addressing the problem of sexual violence in prisons, advising that appropriate education and training is critical in improving prevention and detection. Pardue et al observe that a benign approach taken by prison authorities to this issue could contribute to sustaining the harm. They also acknowledge that prison staff can become implicated or involved in the sexual coercion of female inmates.

Pardue et al argue for innovative, empirically-led research and are keen to see their typology tested and revised with the hope it could feed into policy. For example, women leaving prison should be given counselling akin to post-trauma counselling, both perpetrator and victim should receive psychological and medical assistance following incidents of sexual violence, and the employment of more female staff as well as psychometric testing of potential staff.

Issues which arise in relation to sexual violence in prison include, are the women ‘free’ to report assaults? What are the implications of reporting? Prison has limited health services, the authors argue for the introduction of nursing care, with nurses trained in sexual assault awareness to minimise the risk of secondary victimisation. They cite Haney (2006), who has argued that sexual violence against persons who are imprisoned is a human rights issue.

The continuum of sexual behaviour is also characterised by a corresponding potential for aggression. For example, suppressed sexuality had the lowest risk of aggression while, obviously, sexual violence was at the top end. Some members of the DA found the specific choice of word, ‘aggression’ interesting, and perhaps misleading. In this conceptualisation true homosexuality is less ‘aggressive’ than situational homosexuality. The latter is judged to have more potential for volatile conduct, and may lead to oppression, and the flourishing of a pariah economy. The terminology here is somewhat misleading and may serve to stigmatise gay women and those who begin homosexual relationships while imprisoned, this unconscious reliance on negative stereotyping of gay women as masculine should be avoided.

Tomer Einat and Gila Chen studied perceptions of same-sex relationships in Israel’s only women’s prison, they found that there is tension between the prevalence of such relationships and the negative attitudes towards them, that relationships between shorter-term prisoners were more likely to be based on economic exploitation, and that most Jewish and Muslim women participate in such relationships despite expressing negative attitudes towards them. Einat and Chen found that the prison lacked pseudofamily structures, something they found unexpected considering the literature.

Einat and Chen, in their conclusion, argue that Israeli women prisoners could be experiencing a masculinsation and/or liberation process, becoming more like male inmates and freeing themselves from the constraints of gender. This line of reasoning is somewhat specious; they are equating homosexuality with masculinity. Further, their conception of liberation from gender is tantamount to increasing masculinity. The evidence which leads them to this unconvincing conclusion seems to instead point towards troubling exploitative sexual relationships within the prison they studied. The DA noted the huge differential in the weekly sums prisoners could earn through prison-work, arguably this creates economic disparities which are then resolved in the informal prison economy. Such a differential payment system would appear to be a possible recommendation for reform.

The authors speculate that attitudes will become more positive to such relationships, drawing on evidence that longer-term prisoners conceptualise the relationships in a more understanding manner, this overlooks the fact that the negative attitudes mostly come from short-term prisoners.

Finally, the brief treatment of Muslim/Jewish divide would have provided a very interesting element had it been expanded. The authors concluded, on seemingly little evidence, that the attitudes of women of both religions were not fundamentally different. A fuller exploration of this would have been welcome.

An examination of Einat and Gila’s methodology highlighted some shortcomings. The authors claimed participants were randomly chosen from a participant list compiled by a member of prison staff. More detail on the method of randomisation used, and how the initial list was compiled is required. Selection bias may have occurred during the identification of prospective participants.

The phenomenological approach used throughout interviewing was not continued during data analysis. The use of content analysis to analyse transcripts did not provide an in-depth interpretative approach, required to understand such complex prison experiences. Although two researchers were involved in this study, it appears that peer-reviewing of themes was not completed. Authors also failed to highlight the limitations of using such an experiential form of interviewing, including the difficulty of understanding other people's perceptions, as well as the bias caused by a researcher’s own conceptions.

A systematic approach to data analysis was taken by counting the frequency with which themes and words were used by participants. Word counting may not explore sufficiently the meaning of particular words used by participants, and can lack rigour. Only one respondent spoke about ‘fear’ however, authors presented it as a major theme due to the value they attributed to this experience. It appears researchers’ own conceptions obstructed objective qualitative analysis. Themes highlighting participants’ motivations for partaking in same-sex relationships, along with attitudes towards same-sex relationships during incarceration were presented. Authors provided scant interpretation of themes, and presented respondents’ excerpts without credible interpretation, comparison or analysis.

There is a rich vein of cultural representations of women’s imprisonment, ranging from the ground-breaking television show ‘Orange is the New Black’ to sexploitation films of the 1970s and soap-opera-like dramas such as 'Prisoner Cell Block H' and 'Bad Girls'. Many of these representations provide heavily sexualised characterisation. These cultural manifestations borrow from prison terminology, utilising concepts such as butch and femme. However, as shown in the two articles herein, the active role of research aims to examine lived experiences of women prisoners to present the complexity of sexuality within women’s prisons rather than two-dimensional ciphers.

Most interestingly, this month's discussion quickly moved from a consideration of the two selected articles to a broader (and rapidly spiralling!) debate about the sexualisation of women in the media, both as perpetrators and as victims of crime; in light of the tendency towards such objectification research on women in prison presents a means of acknowledging the subjectivity and integrity of such persons. While DA members, at times, did not remain entirely convinced by the approaches taken in both articles, the thought-provoking and insightful discussion prompted by their subject matter was welcomed and valued by all.

This blog was written by Lynsey Black, Kate O’Hara and Colette Barry.

The views expressed herein are those of the authors’ alone.

A Contemporary Study of the Decision to Incarcerate White-Collar and Street Property Offender

The November article, written by Shanna Van Slyke and William D Bales, looks at the traditional understanding of white-collar offences as somehow less serious and therefore deserving of lesser sentences. They examine whether this tendency has survived the white-collar crime scandals of the early 2000s, notably the Enron episode. The research looks at the sentencing of white-collar and street property offenders in Florida from 1994 to 2004, taking into account legal and extra-legal factors to determine whether a shift in punitivism is evident.

The article provides a timely opportunity to discuss the popular perception of white-collar crime in the wider context of recent Irish events and the seeming groundswell of criticism towards bankers and others perceived to have been complicit in and responsible for the economic downturn. Is the current willingness to take white-collar crime seriously here to stay, or is it an expressive short-term reaction to events?

Venue: Mulligan's Pub on Poolbeg Street

When: Tuesday 19th November at 6pm

Same-Sex Female Relationships in Prison

This October, The Differential Association will be discussing two articles which deal with the issue of the same-sex female relationships in prison.

The first article, by Pardue, Arrigo and Murphy, Sex and Sexuality in Women's Prisons, attempts to provide a typology of the range of sexual relationships found in women's prisons. The other article by Einat and Chen, What's Love Got to do With It, explores inmates' attitudes to same-sex relationships in an Israeli prison. Taking these together, we can compare the suggested typology of Pardue et al, and assess whether we think this conforms to the empirical evidence presented. The issues of victimisation, and exploitation are highlighted in both papers, and it'll give us an interesting chance to discuss one aspect of a topic which is rarely discussed in relation to prison and criminology - sex!

Wednesday October 23rd

Mulligans Back Room, Poolbeg Street

6pm

Superheroes at the DA

In terms of sales figures, it is difficult to argue otherwise than the readership of comic books is still something of a “subcultural niche” (to borrow a phrase from Phillips and Strobl). A quick look at the sales figures show that for August 2013, Infinity was the highest seller in North America, shifting 205,819 issues, with Superman Unchained coming some way behind at 136,319. The Avengers movie, by way of contrast, sold almost 26 million tickets in the US in its opening weekend.

What is undeniable though is the huge influence the comic book industry has exerted on Hollywood in the past number of decades, remarked on in the articles under review. While movie-going does not necessarily translate into comic book sales, the characters and plots on the silver screen can be traced back to their innovation on the page. The cinematic renderings are often not truly reflective of the moral outrage which can be provoked by comic books. It is a medium with a history of worrying the conservatives, epitomised by Fredric Wertham and his crusade against the medium. Indeed, every few weeks within the industry there are fresh outbreaks of anxiety, most recently in the character of Harley Quinn. That these can sometimes translate to the films they inspire is also evident in Jim Carrey's recent decision to distance himself from Kick Ass 2, for reasons relating to its violence content.

The two articles the DA read this month (during which we were also treated to themed baked goods), explored studies on comic books and superhero television shows. Nickie Phillips and Staci Strobl’s study examined paradigms of justice in current comic books, specifically US comic books. Lisa Kort-Butler’s research focused on the depictions of the criminal justice system in cartoon superhero television show aimed at the children’s market.

Comic books often create fictive societies which remain in a state of constant crisis, depicting heroes as holding back a tide of chaos, Kort-Butler writes that “crime seems to be everywhere and the justice system seems helpless to stop it”. Crisis justification becomes the underpinning for repressive policies and extra-legal responses. Kort-Butler analyses superhero television shows from a 15-year period, examining whether they reflect the so-called ‘punitive turn’ in criminal justice policies in the US. She asks whether these depictions are ‘cultural primers’ for children in favour of the dominant views on punishment.

Phillips and Strobl highlight that structural causes are ignored for pathological, individualistic explanations of crime. They identify a post-9/11 era of comics, arguing that story arcs tend to “reproduce the existing power structures of larger society” (308). Kort-Butler too notes that the portrayal of villains accords with the offender as the neo-classical rational actor. Such a view emphasises the importance of tough sentencing, and downplays the importance of social inequality.

Both studies found that traditional law enforcement was depicted as inadequate, or corrupt. Phillips and Strobl argue that this is poles apart from the depictions of the criminal justice agencies in television series, such as NYPD Blue. However, as Kort-Butler finds, in the simplified world of superhero television shows, the police and official criminal justice agencies are ultimately retrieved as the legitimate guardians of society, and all villains apprehended are sent to the police, or the prison, by the heroes.

The hypothesis that they would find a concentration on street crime turned out not to be the case for Phillips and Strobl; the actual findings showed a prevalent concern with organised crime. Perhaps its hierarchical structure and dense networks allows for greater flexibility and breadth in story-telling. They also found that the stories represented dominant, American, hegemonic views on crime and punishment.

What of the moral qualms of many of the most well-known superheroes, such as Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man or Professor Charles Xavier, which prevent them from killing when it can be avoided, as noted by Kort-Butler. Phillips and Strobl argue that even these characters exhibit views on, what they term, deathworthiness, in which the lives of some are seen as less valuable, and disposable, to protect a bigger goal.

Phillips and Strobl argue that the archetypal setting for comic book stories is the traditional, tranquil community. This seems to belie the plethora of titles which take dystopic settings for their action. The prevalence of the traditional All-American settings would seem to be further downgraded following the turn, from the 1980s onwards, which saw titles like Watchmen and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns offer greater reflexivity, and nuanced protagonists with more complex psychological profiles.

Kort-Butler found that in the superhero television shows, aimed at a young audience, these characters tended to minimise some, but not all, evidence of this darker turn. Kort-Butler has published an earlier article working from the same sample of cartoons, in which she found that much criminal activity was centred on greed, criminals could tell right from wrong and rationally chose the wrong path out of self-interest, and that criminals and ordinary persons were sharply differentiated. She writes that this notion of rational actors therefore deserving of harsh punishment matches dominant ideology on crime. Her findings in the article discussed by the DA this month show that incapacitation is prized as the best outcome, and she sees no evidence that there is any confidence placed in rehabilitation.

One of the notable comments from Kort-Butler relates to the use of guns; firearms were shown as the preserve of the law enforcement agencies, rather than the superheroes. The use of guns by the police seemed to be characterised by over-use, and by ineffectual trigger-happiness. The DA speculated that while this did not show guns in a positive light, it may also have the effect of trivialising gun use, after all, in cartoons a bullet rarely finds it mark. However, for the most part her study found evidence of a ‘get-tough’, law and order approach to justice, demonstrated by the heroes’ dismay when villains were released ‘on technicalities’, and in their willingness to go outside the law to capture their foes. However, as the heroes are outside the law, by virtue of the law’s inability and their moral superiority, the use of violence by the protagonists is presented as a desirable outcome.

However, as expressed by Maggie O’Neill and Lizzie Seal, in Transgressive Imaginations, culture can provide sites of resistance to dominant hegemony. In comic books this is demonstrated by heroes like the lesbian, former soldier Kate Kane as Batwoman, Miles Morales, a young African-American boy as Spider-man in Ultimate Marvel continuity, and Daredevil, the character of Matt Murdock, a blind attorney. Paraphrasing O’Neill and Seal, this illustrates the radical, democratic power to culturally re-present normative depictions (O’Neill and Seal, 2012). The empowerment of marginalised groups such as LGBT, ethnic minority or persons with disabilities is all evident within comic books, and recent storylines about the same-sex relationships of Batwoman, in DC, and Northstar and Kyle, in the X-Men books in Marvel, became mainstream news. The DA also pointed to the diversity on show in many of the X-Men books, books which were not part of the sample in either study, despite their huge popularity.

However it remains the case that comic books often present a women-unfriendly world. In a similar vein, Phillips and Strobl question whether ethnicity is a factor involved in deathworthiness, and whether characterisation plays into stereotypical representations of ethnic minorities. It is still true that the rosters of superhero teams are predominantly white and male. This inevitably, would appear to be the flipside of deathworthy, those characters whose lives are valued more highly.

Regarding the limitations of the studies, both articles highlight issues of race and gender which were not explored. This seems to have provided a half-realised opportunity, especially in the case of Phillips and Strobl, who reference these issues in the body of their work without going further. Information on the demographics of comic book readers might also have been interesting. Some figures estimate that almost one-quarter of readers are women, while the general readership skews towards male, and older than what might be expected, considering comic books are so often dismissed as a children’s books, or the domain of the teenage boy.

The DA would also have found a reflexive element to the articles interesting, in which the authors revealed whether they were coming to the research as fans. It was felt that the inclusion of such a reflexive element could have significantly enriched the presentation of the authors’ methodological approaches, particularly so in the case of Phillips and Strobl. Considering that such entertainments are considered ‘niche’, the difference between previous exposure or not could provide immense differences in the selection and interpretation of the content.

In a discussion of the images of crime and justice found in comic books, it should be remembered that we are dealing with a very wide and varied spectrum. Interestingly, in Cultural Criminology and Kryptonite, the authors exclude children’s comic books – a seemingly arbitrary move considering that the readership of many of these titles extends into adult demographic, such as in the newly launched My Little Pony Friendship is Magic line, or the Archie comics. The DA was curious as to the rationale behind such a design choice, and again, the absence of reflections on the authors’ knowledge and engagement with the genre was lamented. Phillips and Strobl’s study lacked definition of the terms of the study, and more concrete rationales for selecting the sample would have been welcome. The aims of their article seem to overspill its capacity, and issues that were briefly touched on, like the Judeo-Christian moralism, and gender and race, were never explored to satisfaction. Phillips and Strobl appear to be aware of this, offering acknowledgement of these limitation and encouraging future research to address such questions at the conclusion of their article. However, these issues may be explored more fully in their recent book on the topic, which should provide an excellent opportunity for the more comprehensive analysis they envision.

Perhaps the most profound insight to emerge from the articles, was the ironic moralising response to comic books considering the dominant hegemonic message they convey. However, while we may agree that the desire for retribution demonstrated in comic books and superhero television shows may be a base response, it is simplistic to say that these gut responses actually dictate criminal justice policy. The comic books, especially, act as dark imaginings of our underlying fears. As such, they may represent safety-valves, and hypothetical world-building, in which we can play out larger concepts and notions of justice. Considering that comic books cover a diverse array of different formats and themes, what can we ultimately say about the industry as a whole? Perhaps only that crime and justice themes continue to be overwhelmingly popular topics for entertainment. Considering the alternatives to the idea of retributive justice found in the sample, in Wonder Woman’s peace-making response for example, it seems that we should focus on the diversity of views. To conclude that “Best-selling comic books are a cultural touchstone for conservative, reactionary values… and reinforce the status quo with seductive and exciting storylines” (328) may be too pat a summary for such a diverse genre.

Epilogue, the story continues...

Having just finished Comic Book Crime: Truth, Justice and the American Way The DA can now answer in the affirmative one question posed above, the book is a comprehensive analysis of all those issues the article could not include within its scope. The book tackles issues of gender, sexuality and race, devoting a substantial amount of space to these analyses and presenting the figures Batwoman, among others, as examples of a counter-hegemonic characters.

The use of excerpts from focus group research are particularly fascinating, providing a telling insight into reader identification; for example, male readers expressed a difficulty relating to female characters in comic books and many participants felt a stigma attached to males reading female-led titles. Reflective of this gender bias, in their focus group research only one female participant could be persuaded to take part. However, the demographic figures suggest female readership is significant.

Interestingly, we also learn that Philips and Strobl did not come to the sub-culture of comic books as total neophytes, and had followed various titles prior to their decision to embark on the study. As the first comprehensive attempt to grapple with comic books through a criminological lens, the study is a hugely welcome addition to cultural criminological.

This months blog was written by Lynsey Black and Colette Barry.

The views expressed herein are the authors' alone.