Women and Prisons: Gender Confined

This course will examine current forms of penal governance in Canadian federal and provincial women's prisons. Through the lens of gender, this course theorizes the complexity of carceral power and examines the shifting and complex nature of women's penal governance. While the functions of prison - to contain, to segregate and to punish - remain consistent, the meaning and content of women's penal governance has changed over time. We examine how penal governance and the way that people experience incarceration is gendered, classed and racialized and hybrid forms of power and knowledge have informed prison strategies.