Abstract
Recent decades have seen substantial increases in U.S. imprisonment rates, and women’s rates appear to be increasing faster than men’s. In her timely book, Breaking Women, Jill McCorkel places women’s imprisonment squarely within Feeley and Simon’s work The New Penology (1992). A central theme is that the American system of criminal justice has abandoned the goal of rehabilitation and instead become focused on controlling “unruly” groups. Within this framework, McCorkel examines the effects of “get tough” policies on longstanding forms of social control in a women’s correctional institution. Importantly, McCorkel critically examines the social-control producing effects of a privately run experimental drug treatment program, Project Habilitate Women (PHW). She makes a strong case that PHW treatment serves as a new source of punitive social control, with the central goal of “breaking down” inmates’ sense of self (p. 68).
McCorkel’s analysis draws from three sources of ethnographic data: participant observations, archival documents, and semistructured interviews with 74 inmates and 29 prison staff and administrators at East State Women’s Correctional Institution. The discussion of methodology would benefit from more detail. Other than this, I found Breaking Women to be thoughtfully organized and well written.
The book is organized into three substantive sections, along with introductory and concluding chapters, which expertly frame McCorkel’s central narrative. Part one provides a social and historical context to East State Women’s Correctional Institution and the effects of politically popular “get tough” ideology in shifting the institution’s goals away from their historical focus (rehabilitative paternalism) toward more punitive control. These shifts occurred within ideological and resource crises, which arose from two primary sources: privately operated correctional services and demographic shifts in the inmate population. Private interests played an important role in alleviating resource crises (e.g., supervising up to 25 percent of inmates) and reframing correctional ideology. For example, PHW was marketed by reframing the goals of treatment away from (politically unpopular) rehabilitation to “habilitation.” This new focus supports “tough on crime” narratives and continued need for PHW’s services because it is based on assumptions of a “diseased self,” which can be treated but never fully reformed (p. 57). McCorkel further argues that the shift toward punitive social control co-occurred with changing racial demographics of the institution’s population. Specifically, when women of color became the numerical majority, a racialized discourse arose among prison officials identifying a “new breed” of prisoner (p. 77). Embedded here are explicit links to Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow (2010), which provides important considerations of the role of imprisonment in producing and maintaining a racial caste system, the manifestations of which vary along gender and class lines.
Part two provides a vivid look at PHW social control practices, which represent a punitive break from prior policies. Specifically, “treatment” involves constant surveillance, confrontation, humiliation, and attempts to break down inmates “real selves” (p. 113). Confrontation sessions target traditionally gendered status markers, such as motherhood, sexuality, and dependency and are firmly rooted in neoliberal ideology. For example, PHW’s goal of “responsibilization” holds offenders accountable and encourages personal responsibility, while failing to account for the constraints of larger social structures (e.g., poverty) on individual choices (p. 151). While I find this section promising, it would benefit from a more thorough discussion of gendered social control, especially scholarship in the area of sexuality. Also, there is much to admire about McCorkel’s critique of PHW, but some discussion of its divergence from mainstream addiction treatment is needed.
Part three examines the effects of PHW’s social control practices through the eyes of inmates themselves, specifically, their strategies for negotiating threats to self-identity. McCorkel finds three ways that inmates navigate their treatment environment: (1) “surrender” and accept institutional definitions of the “diseased self”; (2) reject institutional definitions of self, use defiance to combat disrespect, and defect from the program (“rip and run”); (3) reject institutional definitions of self but remain in the program to receive some benefit (e.g., reduced sentence) (“fake it to make it”).
In sum, Breaking Women provides a significant contribution by building upon prior work on prisons as gendered institutions. Its major strengths are threefold. First, McCorkel firmly positions gendered forms of social control (e.g., “responsibilization”) within the larger framework of the new penology. Second, she traces the roots of punishment rationales (e.g., the “disordered self”) to the larger corrections-industrial context (i.e., privately run treatment). Finally, McCorkel’s thoughtful consideration of multiple and intersecting inequalities does much to highlight the central role of race and its influence on criminal punishment along gender and class lines. This book will be of interest to scholars in the areas of corrections, race/ethnicity, and gender studies.