Official figures

Implications for classification & rehabilitation

Engendering correctional centres?

Deputy Minister Ms Hlengiwe Mkhize, raised issues related to slow pace of development of gender-sensitivity within correctional centres

“Mismatch between what is said in public and what is practiced privately”.

Beyond traditional discourses

Feminist-sociological, Foucauldian discourse analysis & subaltern approaches.

Classification of offenders is not an objective, value-free practise

Detached from power dynamics that are at play in the larger society

I want to understand the classification of women from their voices “subaltern approach”

Unpack the subjectivities surrounding their rehabilitative needs

Management of order among inmates “perceived dangerousness”

Privileges = security placement

Monitor – offenders behaviour

Similar risks and needs for corrective intervention.

What is being classified? And How?

Who or what is being excluded by this classification?

What are the criteria for inclusion in the classification? On what basis are some objects excluded?

What person or group of persons constructed this classification? Who accepts or uses it?

Who is authorized now to employ or modify this classification?

What is the source of authority of the person/s who developed the classification or of those who now use it?

Does any person or group challenge the validity or criticize the effects of this classification? Why?

How was its object regarded before it was classified this way?

How do women classified as offenders, reclassify themselves?

How dangerous is a female inmate? The more dangerous an inmate, the easier it is to classify a person

The focus is on how to punish; and not ‘why to punish  

The social construction of female deviance The ungendered legal process – police, court &

sentencing decisions Reduced levels of humanity Psychological needs – targeted

Identify the object of a classification or reclassification tool

Identify what the classification excludes

Identify the human subjects who devise and use the classification system

Locate the classification system in time & space

Gendered pathways to incarceration ◦ Contrasting case histories ◦ Racialised women – illegal work shoplifters, e.g

“ukuphanda” “sihleli” – feminine and masculine roles

◦ Drug related offending◦ Childhood abuse = incest – collude with the

abuser – telling lies◦ Indirect victims – ‘mother to my mother, sisters &

brothers

Significant relationships – drug addicted partners, abusive spouses

Resistance to violence – criminalisation

Children

Agency – sex workers ‘robbing and conning clients

Fighting past injustices

The average correctional centre regarding classification and rehabilitative programming or corrective intervention for women has not changed.

◦ Obsolete programs (anger management, religious pogramming, laundry – earn R10-00 per load; hairstyling)

◦ The gap between inside and outside would be greater than ever

◦ Overcentralisation and unique centrs (very few in each province)

◦ Excessive security, which added to prisons’ centrality and uniqueness would make for the gradual loss of family and other relations

◦ Patterned on men’s prisons, alien to women’s needs.

Correctional centres =   warehouse-prison = not the prison which deters, rehabilitates or punishes, but rather that which neutralizes.

Postponement of women’s offending = shoplifters = distribution of offenders

“the main justification for classification of offenders is the notion for criminal contamination or contangion (Foucault, 1979a)

There seems to be common sense understanding that criminality is catching and that perhaps it matters more when you catch it (Goldinglay, 2009).