Inmate women as participants in education in Queensland correctional centres

Inmate women as participants in education in Queensland correctional centres

This paper reports on research with women inmates undertaking prison education in two Queensland correctional facilities: Brisbane Women’s Correctional Centre and Helena Jones Community Corrections Centre. Data collection spanned the period of relocation of Brisbane Women’s from Annerley to Wacol, from a traditional lock-and-key establishment to a keyless unit. This study investigated inmate women’s accounts of education using interview data and analysis of policy. While the study drew upon feminist criminology theory and conversation analysis to provide a theoretical dialogue for investigating prison education, this paper investigates more broadly five key themes. They are categorised as a culture of containment and surveillance, types of education, access to education, pedagogical issues and the role of support groups in education. Women’s prisons and their rituals have been constructed by men for men, sometimes with concessions made for women and criminal laws have been drawn with reference to the way that men define women and perpetuate the dependence of women on more powerful male others. The structural and interactional features of oral texts such as interviews were examined to understand the educational experiences of women inmates. The research found that women’s involvement in prison education is framed by a culture of containment and surveillance. In the keyless prison, heightened electronic security reported increases in internal body searches and routinized head counts were found to exacerbate the difficulties women inmates experience in prison education. This work recommends as a research policy imperative a longitudinal case study to investigate women inmates’ educational access and experiences.

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