Prison,women and prison rules for women

Abstract

Imprisoned women are rather ‘unproblematic’, especially when compared with imprisoned men. However, the seemingly logical expectation of a less harsh prison regime for women is not always implemented and women are sometimes imprisoned in the same or even stricter regimes than men. This paper addresses the enforcement of prison sentences for women in Slovenia. Results of data analysis indicate that imprisoned women in the Slovenian prison system are generally (less) ‘problematic’, but the prison regime is disproportionately (increasingly) strict. The findings indicate that the Slovenian prison system plays a role in broader social mechanisms of gender-based discipline because imprisoned women are serving a double sentence: one for committing a crime and another for being a woman (who committed a crime).

Keywords

Escape misconduct prison regime (un)conformist women

Introduction

I open the paper by presenting some of the existing knowledge about imprisoned women being ‘(un)problematic’ and the related need for different enforcement of prison sentences for women.¹ In the main part of the paper, I examine the presented points on the case of the prison system and the enforcement of prison sentences for women in Slovenia. Finally, I will try to place the findings in a broader social context. In places, I compare women and men. However, such comparisons are always dangerous in terms of recreating and perpetuating stereotypes about what should or what is supposed to be ‘womanly’. Differences between women and men exist, with the key emphasis being that they are not reflections of ‘naturally given’ sex differences between women and men.² Instead, they are really the consequence of sociocultural constructed genders (Antić Gaber, 2014).³

Incarcerated women represent a minority of the global incarcerated population. World-wide, the share of women in prisons stands at between 2 and 9 percent of the entire prison population (Walmsley, 2017).⁴ Probably, this indicates the generally lower participation of women in crime and thus their greater (compared with men) conformity to criminal law norms. A number of considerations must be taken into account when making such an assessment about the relationship between the rate of crime and the number of imprisoned persons (see, for example, Newburn, 2007, and Brvar, 2013). These include factors specifically related to the gender of the person who committed or allegedly committed a criminal offence (see, for example, Newburn, 2007, and Plesničar, 2012).

There are several points of reduction in the number of persons on the timeline between the moment of committing a crime to the finale in the form of serving a prison sentence. All of these reductions can be examined using gender ‘glasses’ and analysing the role of the gender of the person who committed the offence (and also the gender of the person who detects or investigates the offence, or prosecutes or convicts the alleged perpetrator). Consequently, we could discuss whether these reductions are more extensive among women (who have committed a criminal offence) than among men, and whether this is the sole reason for such a small proportion of women at the end of the timeframe (in prison). Criticism seems to be justified of the minority belief that statistical indicators do not prove a smaller extent of criminality of women because their criminal behaviour is supposedly more hidden or less noticeable. Relatively light sentences reflect the small ‘scale’ of the unlawfulness of women’s crimes rather than men’s ‘cavalier’ leniency. What is more, the criminal justice system has been known to be extremely brutal when treating women (Kanduč, 2001). Research mostly show that, even when taking into account the hidden criminality, the ratio of participation in crime between men and women remains equally unequal (Kanduč, 2007).

The question women commit fewer criminal offences than men has already been addressed many times. Various discourses, such as biological, religious and psychiatric, have been used to explain this criminological particularity (see, for example, summarized in Carlen and Christina, 1985; Carlen and Worall, 2004; Davis, 2003; Kanduč, 2007; or Newburn, 2007). For this paper, it is enough to point out the influence of social control, to which women are subjected to a greater extent and in different ways than men. Women are controlled in a number of informal ways outside the criminal justice system, for example through family and gender ideologies, structures and processes (Carlen, 1995, cited by Carlen and Worall, 2004), and are consequently less involved in crime.

Imprisoned women deviate from the perceived usual conformity to criminal law norms because of the fact that they have committed criminal offences. This deviation from the usual conformity is paradoxical, because it is often ‘done’ in a fairly ‘conformist’ way: their offences are often rather ‘unproblematic’ (and especially less problematic when compared with men’s offences). The same could be said of their behaviour during imprisonment. Crimes committed by women cannot even be described as ‘societal problems’ since they do not reach the ideological ‘threshold’ of socially problematic (Kanduč, 2001) or ‘harmful’ (Carlen, 2002; Walklate, 2004; Wright et al., 2012).

In comparison with men, women tend to commit the same kinds of crimes, but they commit them more rarely (Davies, 2011) and they are more often characterized as less ‘serious’ crimes (Walklate, 2004). At this point, it is crucial to define the term ‘serious’ crime. Conduct that is typically understood as a ‘serious’ offence is not necessarily the most harmful act against society or an individual (for more, see, for example, Newburn, 2007). It is quite convenient to accept regulations and criminal codes as a clear division between harmful and harmless human conduct. However, positioning human behaviour along this axis (legal prohibition) often eliminates the possibility of evaluating wider social structures and their harmfulness. Some forms of violence and social regulations (structural violence such as work and poverty) are significantly more harmful than criminal offences committed by individuals (Galeano, 2015; Kanduč, 2003; Žižek, 2007). Because criminal codes poorly reflect the dichotomy of harmful and harmless human conducts, it is hard to trust them with the task of ranking prohibited acts with regard to their harmfulness (or ‘seriousness’). In general, ‘serious crimes’ are most commonly defined as criminal offences against life and limb (because they constitute an attack on human life, which is considered the highest human value). However, when compared with a complex white-collar criminal offence that affects many people and pushes them into the risk of poverty the seemingly clear ‘seriousness’ may become blurred. Understandably, when considering offences defined in criminal codes, authors tend to explain the less ‘serious’ nature of women’s criminality by positioning it along the legal prohibition axis. For example, the ‘unproblematic’ or ‘harmless’ nature of women’s offences is expressed in them being mostly property oriented (Van Kempen and Krabbe, 2017) and rarely involving violence (Carlen, 2002; Van Kempen and Krabbe, 2017; Wright et al., 2012). There are, however, some other ways of explaining the ‘less serious’ nature of women’s criminality. These address the qualitative features of their offences. When women commit violent criminal acts, these are usually isolated acts that do not reflect the general behaviour of the female perpetrator (Kubiak, Kim, Bybee and Eshelman, 2014). Compared with men’s criminality, this reflects the ‘less serious’ element. Similarly, Plesničar and Petrovec (2012) analysed cases of murders committed by women in Slovenia and suggested that a significant proportion of them attacked their (ex) spouse, who had victimized them prior to the offence. A clear example of addressing the ‘less serious’ feature of women’s criminality is their involvement when compared with men in the same criminal offences categories. When committing the same category of criminal acts, women often act in lower positions than men (for example, women transporting drugs and men organizing trafficking) (Wright et al., 2012).

The behaviour of imprisoned women is less problematic as well. Generally they are not physically violent (Owen et al., 2017; Wright et al., 2012),⁵ and they tend not to escape from prison (Carlen and Worall, 2004; Paget, 2008, cited by Bartels and Gaffney, 2011; Wright et al., 2012). If they do escape, women usually do not pose a particular danger to the community (Carlen and Worall, 2004; Mallicoat, 2012). Imprisoned women tend to do the opposite and their ‘prison survival strategy’ is often referred to as ‘being obedient’ (European Commission, 2005; Owen et al., 2017).

The less serious structure of crimes committed by women and their (more) conformist behaviour in prison are logically followed by the expectation that the enforcement of prison sentences for women would be proportionately less harsh. Women should therefore be imprisoned (to an even greater extent than men) in as non-restrictive conditions as possible (Mallicoat, 2012). Their imprisonment should focus more on rehabilitation and treatment rather than on punishment and security (Wright et al., 2012). Such guidelines are also set by various international legal and political bodies addressing the issue of women in prisons. The European Resolution on women and children in prisons (European Parliament, 1989), for example, sets a recommendation that imprisoned women should be allowed home visits to the fullest possible extent and the restrictions of women’s prisons should be reduced to the minimum. The Bangkok Rules (United Nations, 2011)⁶ set a similar norm: it is recommended that the generally lower risk to the community should be considered when enforcing prison sentences for women. In addition, prisons should be ‘open’ to the greatest possible extent.

Despite the seemingly simple connection between the gender-based features of imprisoned women and the need for a relatively more lenient enforcement of prison sentences, the reality of women’s prisons is often diametrically opposite. There are indications that imprisoned women are still placed in stricter regimes than is necessary and justifiable (ICPS, 2008). In some cases, they are even subjected to stricter regimes than men (Davis, 2003) and face more intensive surveillance and stricter prison rules. They are thus subjected to harsher and more extensive punishment for misdemeanours (Carlen and Worall, 2004; Heidensohn and Silvestri, 2012).

Such inequalities most likely emerged with separate women’s prisons. The fact that imprisoned women committed different offences than men and that their behaviour in prison was different led to the establishment of the first women’s prison in the United Kingdom. That prison was advocated and later led by Elizabeth Fry (Walklate, 2004). Initially, her work brought about positive change and improvement in the living conditions for imprisoned women. But, later, her records show an increasing number of elements of special disciplining methods and increasing control over the women (Carlen and Worall, 2004). Additional disciplining and related inequalities in the enforcement of prison sentences for women stem from discriminatory social practices, which generally demand higher standards of behaviour from women (Carlen and Christina, 1985) than from men. Stricter enforcement of prison sentences for women thus emerges at the intersection of two aspects of marginalization: to be a person in prison and to be a woman. For a woman in prison this means that she is subjected to socially constructed ideas about the prison, which determine how to deal with imprisoned persons, as well as to ideas about femininity, which additionally define dealing with women (in prison). With this kind of practice, the role of prison extends from ‘just’ being a punitive institution into being an agent of broader social control of women and reproduction of (power) relations between genders (Bosworth, 2000).

Methods

The problem and the goal

With the analysis, I wanted to find out:

whether the ‘unproblematic nature’ of imprisoned women could also be attributed to the behaviour of imprisoned women in Slovenia because they commit less serious criminal offences and mostly conform to the freedom of movement restrictions imposed by prison, and

how (if at all) the prison system in Slovenia responds to the allegedly less serious structure of women’s offences and their (more) conformist behaviour.

Finally, I wanted to evaluate my findings on the example of Slovenia with respect to the broader social role of prisons in imposing control and discipline over women.

Some relevant data that could highlight the research goals appear individually in different papers. For example, Plesničar (2012) found that women in Slovenia were rarely convicted of violent or sexual offences and that other types of crime predominated. Mrhar Prelić (2015) found that, in 2013, a majority (more than 60 percent) of imprisoned women were serving sentences in less restrictive regimes and the level of abuse of these regimes was low (Mrhar Prelić, 2015). Similarly, Tadič found that, in 2014, the share of women serving sentences in less restrictive regimes was significantly higher when compared with imprisoned men. This led to the conclusion that prison for women was more ‘open’ (Tadič, 2014). However, it is not possible to answer the questions I have posed using only these outlines. The data required to address the research questions can be found in annual reports of the prison administration of the Republic of Slovenia (URSIKS) and also in databases of the Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia (SURS). However, these data have not yet been gathered and analysed in a way that would provide conclusions relevant to the goals I have set.

Data

I gathered the data from the annual reports of URSIKS and SURS for 2005–15 (hereafter referred to as the ‘studied period’). Some of the data in the URSIKS annual reports are not presented separately by imprisoned persons’ gender. To make up for the missing data, I extracted additional information from the annual reports of Ig Prison (the only prison for women in Slovenia) and some data directly from URSIKS. In order to answer the question about the ‘unproblematic’ behaviour of imprisoned women, I gathered data on criminal offences for which they had been serving prison sentences, the occurrence of certain forms of highly non-conformist behaviour in relation to the freedom of movement restrictions imposed by the prison (abuse of out-of-prison benefits and escape), recidivism, and use of illegal drugs.

The decision to include data on the use of illegal drugs as a factor explaining the ‘problematic nature’ of imprisoned women’s behaviour may seem unusual or inappropriate to the reader. I did not find a source to justify this choice, but based my decision in part on the fact that success in the treatment of addiction is assessed when deciding on the conditional release of a person (Article 88 of the Criminal Code – Kazenski zakonik, KZ-1). Mostly, I made the decision to include the drug use factor based on my experience of working in prisons (and prison-related) settings, which led me to the realization that the use of drugs is often regarded as a risk factor when deciding whether a person should be granted less harsh restrictions.

In order to address the question of the prison system’s response to the supposed ‘unproblematic’ behaviour of imprisoned women, I collected data on some forms of the easing of restrictions on freedom of movement imposed by a prison, namely data on the use of more open regimes of serving sentences, granting out-of-prison benefits and on the use of conditional release.

Key terms

To interpret the results more clearly, it is important to first clarify the legal definitions of the key terms used: regime, out-of-prison benefits and conditional release.

Regime

The ‘regime’ for serving a sentence is (partially) regulated by the Enforcement of Penal Sanctions Act (Zakon o izvrševanju kazenskih sankcij – ZIKS-1), which stipulates that prisons in Slovenia are classified with respect to the ‘degree of security and restriction of freedom of movement’ (Article 206, ZIKS-1). They are classified into categories: closed institutions (institutions with a stricter regime), semi-open and open institutions (institutions with a more liberal regime).⁷ Two norms are derived from this: 1. the definition that the semi-open and open regimes are understood as more liberal regimes, and the closed regime as a stricter regime; 2. the term ‘regime’ refers to the level of security and restriction on the freedom of movement of imprisoned persons.

The detailed meaning of the term ‘regime’ is not defined by law, so it is not possible – by using only legal provisions – to determine what is actually meant by the terms ‘stricter’, ‘more liberal’, ‘open’, ‘semi-open’ and ‘closed’ and what the main differences between them are in terms of reducing the level of restriction of the freedom of movement. The lack of provisions in this respect is partially offset by the provisions of the Rules on Enforcement of Punishments of Imprisonment (Pravilnik o izvrševanju kazni zapora, PIKZ), which are summarized in Table 1.

Table 1.

The legal framework of prison regimes (ZIKS and PIKZ).

	Closed regime	Semi-open regime (lower restrictions in comparison with closed regime)	Open regime (lower restrictions in comparison with semi-open regime)
Frequency of surveillance over a person (Article 24, PIKZ)	Regular	Occasional	–
Restrictions on movement when leaving for work or institutions outside the prison (Article 24, PIKZ)	Under supervision or escort of a judiciary police officer	Unsupervised or occasionally supervised while at the workplace	Unsupervised movement in the prison area
Number of unsupervised leaves from the prison^a (Article 77, ZIKS-1)	Maximum three per month	Maximum four per month	Maximum five per month
Restrictions on movement inside the prison (Article 25, PIKZ)	Living and working spaces are allowed to be locked	Rooms may be unlocked if there is a special separate semi-open department	–

Note:

‘Unsupervised leave’ means that a person leaves the prison unsupervised and returns after a maximum of 53 hours (Article 77, ZIKS-1). Such a temporary absence from the prison may be used by an imprisoned person to go home, to visit persons of relevance to them, or to use the time for leisure in other ways given their own interests and needs.

Similarly to the law, the rules use abstract formulations (such as ‘regular’ or ‘periodic’ surveillance). Therefore it is not possible to evaluate specifically how imprisoned persons in different regimes are or should be restricted or ‘freed’ of some restrictions. Owing to the lack of clarity about the prison regimes in Slovenia,⁸ it is also not clear how regimes are implemented in practice.

There are few insights about the existence of significant differences in how individual prisons enforce different regimes of punishment. For example, Plesničar (2015) found that there are major differences in granting use of the Internet and mobile phones in Slovenian prisons under the given legal framework. Among other things, it was also found that only the prison for women does not allow this practice (with the exception of monitored use of the Internet for educational purposes). However, an analysis of the restrictions that apply in different regimes has not yet been carried out in Slovenia (Cvikl and Ambrož, 2017).

Out-of-prison benefits

The term ‘out-of-prison’ benefits refers to some of the benefits (Article 77, ZIKS-1) that can be granted to an imprisoned person and are related to (unsupervised) movement of the imprisoned person outside of the prison for a limited period of time. These benefits include: unsupervised leaves from the prison (anywhere in the country, up to 53 hours), visits outside the prison, and use of their annual leave (gained by working) outside the prison. The possibility for granting ‘out-of-prison’ benefits is determined by a set of criteria defined in regulations for assessing eligibility for the benefit. These criteria open up a rather broad field of ‘self-understanding’ of when and to whom it is actually allowed to grant it (which makes the scope of the benefits subject to at least as unclear a frame as the frame of regimes).

A benefit is granted after considering the following factors: 1. whether the imprisoned person is actively striving to achieve success in fulfilling their personal plan (an individualized plan for serving a sentence, Article 10 of ZIKS-1); 2. whether the person respects the prison house rules (Article 77 of ZIKS-1); 3. the personality of the imprisoned person (whatever that means!); 4. the risk of escaping; 5. the type and method of committing a criminal offence; 6. the manner in which the person came to the prison (by themselves or by police intervention); 7. other potential criminal proceedings; 8. the response of the community in the environment where the criminal offence was committed (Article 77 of ZIKS-1); 9. other circumstances that indicate the possibility of misconduct while using the granted benefit (which are further detailed in Article 72 of PIKZ). Similarly to regimes, there are no additional data or other insights into how these rules are implemented in practice.

Conditional release

Conditional release is the most extensive form of easing restrictions on freedom of movement that imprisoned persons in Slovenia may be granted while serving a sentence. In Slovenia, conditional release means that the person is released before the full sentence has been served (but not before half of the sentence has been served) with the condition that a new criminal offence is not committed before the imposed sentence expires (Article 88, KZ-1). When deciding on granting conditional release, the probability of repeating the offence is also assessed. This is done, inter alia, by taking into account recidivism, the behaviour of the person while serving their sentence and success in the treatment of addiction (Article 88, KZ-1).

Results

The collected and processed data are shown in Tables 2 and Table 3 in Appendix 1. The results and findings about imprisoned women in Slovenia in the studied period are presented below.

Structure of criminal offences

A majority of women were serving prison sentences for less serious and physically non-dangerous offences. A plurality (80 percent) were admitted to prison for ‘property-related’ offences, and a minority (7 percent) for physically violent crimes.⁹ I considered offences against property and the economy, as well as offences against public health as ‘property-related’ offences. I added the offences against public health to the list of ‘property-related’ offences because the vast majority (86 percent) of women who were sentenced to an unconditional prison sentence for these offences in the comparable period (2006–15)¹⁰ were imprisoned for offences related to the production and trafficking of illegal drugs. These offences indicate an economic motivation rather than a motivation to physically harm another person. Similarly, men who were sentenced for offences against public health in a comparable period were in most cases (91 percent) sentenced for offences related to illegal drug production and trafficking.

Compared with men, women were sentenced for less serious offences. More often than men they were sentenced for ‘property-related’ offences (the difference stood at 11 percentage points) and fewer times than men for physically violent offences (the difference stood at 4 percentage points). The incidence of imprisonment among women increased in particular because of their incarceration for less serious offences, as it was mostly the number of ‘property-related’ offences that increased (Figure 1). Similar findings were established for men (Figure 2).

Figure 1.

Imprisoned women’s offences.

Figure 2.

Imprisoned men’s offences.

Abuses of out-of-prison benefits

No transgressions were recorded in 99 percent of cases when out-of-prison benefits were granted to women. In the 1 percent of cases where misconduct occurred, it was committed in a ‘lesser’ way. Not one of the women escaped while enjoying the benefit, and most of the transgressions (76 percent) were late returns to prison. The rest were a more serious form of misconduct (suspicion of committing an offence or being brought back by the police). The share of transgressions in granted out-of-prison benefits was mostly unchanged throughout the period, ranging between 0 and 1 percent. Women and men committed misconduct equally rarely: the share was largely the same among men (between 0 and 1 percent throughout the studied period). However, transgressions by women were significantly ‘less serious’ than those committed by men. Compared with men, women far more often missed the deadline for returning to prison (the difference was 29 percentage points). In contrast, the share of serious forms of misconduct (escape, suspicion of committing a criminal offence or being brought back by the police) was considerably lower among women (the difference was 29 percentage points). The share of abuses of out-of-prison benefits varied throughout the studied period among women as well as men.

Escapes

Most imprisoned women (99 percent) never escaped. When they did escape, they most often (56 percent) did it in a rather ‘passive’ way by simply not returning to prison when they had been allowed to go outside. In these cases, they might have been allowed to leave prison for work, to attend a court hearing or to go to other state institutions (Article 24, PIKZ), using so-called ‘leave with a purpose’ (Article 113, PIKZ) or a temporary suspension of the enforcement of the sentence (Article 82, ZIKS-1). The second most frequent form of escape was escape from a more liberal regime (28 percent), which means they escaped while somewhere in the vicinity of the prison (or at work outside the prison). Compared with men, the incidence of escapes among women was approximately the same (the difference was 0.1 percentage point) and mostly they escaped in similar ways to men.

Recidivism

More than three-quarters of women (78 percent) were serving a prison sentence for the first time. Compared with men, there was significantly less recidivism among women (the difference was 21 percentage points). The share of recidivism among women and men varied throughout the studied period.

Use of illegal drugs

A problem with the use of illegal drugs was identified among a minority (27 percent) of women, and the proportion of those who experienced such problems was generally decreasing throughout the studied period. Compared with men, the proportion of problems related to drug use was lower (the difference was 5 percentage points). The share of problems related to drug use decreased among women and men over the studied period.

Level of regime strictness

A majority of women (61 percent) were placed in a more liberal regime, but the percentage decreased throughout the studied period, which means that moving to a less strict regime became harder. Compared with men, a significantly higher percentage of women were granted a more liberal regime (the difference was 30 percentage points), but the proportion was generally falling at a higher rate among women over the studied period.

In connection to the regimes, an additional dynamic of the occurrence of escapes among women emerged. I found that, despite a similar incidence, women for the most part actually posed a lower escape risk than men. They escaped as rarely as men despite the fact that they were serving sentences with significantly milder restrictions on their freedom of movement (from the perspective of the regime).

In addition, the decreasing share of women in more liberal regimes did not result in fewer escapes. The increasingly stricter regimes in general resulted in an increased incidence of escapes, as they were recorded more often in the years with higher shares of women in stricter regimes (and vice versa).

Granting out-of-prison benefits

On average, each imprisoned woman was granted seven out-of-prison benefits a year. The number of benefits was decreasing in the first half of the studied period and increasing in the second. On average, a woman received one out-of-prison benefit more than a man every year. The fluctuation in the number of granted benefits was similar among women and men.

I found an additional dynamic in the abuse of benefits among women: a change in the number of out-of-prison benefits did not lead to an increase in the incidence of misconduct among women. The increasingly strict granting of benefits in the first half of the period did not reduce the rate of misconduct, and the increasing rate of granting benefits in the second half did not increase the likelihood of benefit abuse. Instead, transgressions were equally rare throughout the period. Not a single woman escaped while using out-of-prison benefits irrespective of a stricter or milder regime of granting out-of-prison benefits.

Granting conditional release

Of all the released women, slightly over a quarter were conditionally released (26 percent), and the share of the conditionally released declined over the studied period. Conditional release was granted to women and men at a similar rate (the difference was 2 percentage points), but the share of women who were granted conditional release decreased at a faster rate than the share of men.

Discussion

The specificities of imprisoned women with respect to the structure of criminal offences are evident in Slovenia. The results show that the women who were imprisoned in Slovenia in the studied period were mostly sentenced for criminal offences by which they acquired economic gains and that they did not, in the vast majority of cases, commit violent offences. The conformity of women’s behaviour to the restrictions on freedom of movement imposed by the prison was especially evident. Although most of the women were incarcerated in more liberal regimes, escapes were a rare occurrence. Among the rare escapes, most were committed in a ‘passive’ way by not returning to the prison after being allowed to move somewhere outside. Transgressions committed while using out-of-prison benefits were extremely rare and, when they did occur, they were mostly committed in ‘milder’ ways such as returning late to prison. There are also other findings that point away from imprisoned women being ‘problematic’. Most of them were in prison for the first time and most of them had no problems with respect to illegal drug use.

I found that imprisoned women did not stand out significantly in the context of certain factors when compared with men. The incidence of prison admissions among men also increased, mainly owing to sentences for property-related offences, and most of them were also sentenced for unlawful economic gains. In addition, women also did not stand out with regard to the incidence of escapes: they escaped as rarely as men and also in similar ways. The occurrence of transgressions while using out-of-prison benefits was as rare among women as it was among men and the share of transgressions did not change significantly among men or women throughout the studied period.

However, I did find some important differences. Women generally committed less serious criminal offences than men: there was a greater proportion of property-related offences and a smaller share of physically violent offences among women. Out-of-prison benefit transgressions occurred as often as among men, but women committed them in a ‘milder’ way compared with men. With women, misconduct more often meant a delay in returning to prison, and serious forms of misconduct (escape, suspicion of committing a criminal offence, being brought back to prison by the police) were significantly fewer. The incidence of escapes was similar among both men and women, but women were serving sentences in a significantly less restricted environment with respect to the limitations on their freedom of movement (a greater proportion were placed in more liberal regimes). The proportion of recidivism was considerably lower among women. The share of persons who experience problems with the use of illegal drugs was also lower among women than among men. The listed differences show that, in comparison with men, women imprisoned in Slovenia in the studied period were more ‘unproblematic’.

Based on the fact that no indications of increasing ‘non-conformity’ among women were found, and especially because of the observed differences between women and men, a correspondingly different (less severe) enforcement of prison sentences for women would be expected, but I did not find this to be the case. On the contrary, I found that enforcement of prison sentences for women was unnecessarily and disproportionately increasingly stricter. Despite the increasing share of property-related offences, the unchanged share of physically violent offences, the unchanging rare occurrences of out-of-prison benefit misconduct, the rare escapes, an ever-lower proportion of recidivism and of identified illegal drug use problems – freedom of movement outside the prison for women was increasingly restricted while the share of those placed in more liberal regimes was declining, as was the proportion of those conditionally released.

I found that restrictions on freedom of movement for imprisoned men were increasingly stricter, as they were for women (the share of those placed in more liberal regimes and those who were conditionally released fell among men as well) despite the largely ‘unproblematic’ attitude of imprisoned persons to prison restrictions on their freedom of movement (the incidence of escapes and out-of-prison benefits misconduct did not rise among either men or women).

Some may understand by these findings that ‘unproblematic’ behaviour is the result of an increasingly strict enforcement of imprisonment, but this would most likely be a mistaken interpretation. A causative connection between the intensification of prison restrictions and (more) conformist behaviour of imprisoned persons was proven to be mistaken in the Slovenian prison system some time ago. For example, the so-called ‘Ig Experiment’, which among other things represented a process of ‘opening’ a women’s prison, showed that the level of movement restriction reflected the employees’ attitude rather than an effort to address and regulate the actual behaviour of imprisoned persons (Muršič and Petrovec, 2011).

This analysis also showed that the intensification of the enforcement of prison sentences by increasingly rare granting of out-of-prison benefits and placing persons in closed regimes did not in itself reduce the incidence of escapes and misconduct while using out-of-prison benefits.

In the years when the share of women placed in more liberal regimes was lower, the incidence of escapes was generally higher. Even more prominently, this was the case in the context of out-of-prison benefits. Namely, granting fewer benefits in the first half of the studied period was not followed by a decrease in the incidence of misconduct while enjoying the benefits. The tightening of restrictions on freedom of movement during imprisonment can therefore not be attributed to the reduction in the scope of unacceptable behaviour in the form of escapes and misconduct while using out-of-prison benefits. This begs the question of what encouraged the prison system to exacerbate the enforcement of imprisonment, but this reflection unfortunately is beyond the scope of this paper.

In this paper, I deal more with the realization that a general wave of tightening the enforcement of prison sentences took place in the Slovenian prison system, and it was particularly disproportionate and unnecessarily harsher towards imprisoned women. Despite the less serious structure of offences, the milder forms of misconduct while enjoying out-of-prison benefits, the same incidence of escapes under much less restrictive regimes, the smaller share of recidivism, and fewer detected problems related to illegal drug use, women were conditionally released approximately as often as men. Additionally, despite the fact that the incidence of escapes and misconduct among women was the same as among men, and the fact that among women as well as men there was an increasing share of less serious offences, the share of women who were conditionally released was decreasing more rapidly (than the share of men).

Conclusion

The Slovenian prison system has not been able to avoid the often present danger of prison rules becoming stricter for women than for men. Results show that the task of women imprisoned in the studied period in Slovenia was dual: they had to submit themselves to the (increasingly strict) punishment because they had committed a criminal offence, and they had to submit themselves to additional (and proportionally increasingly strict) punishment because they were women (who had committed a criminal offence). Furthermore, the results show that, in general, they did not resist stricter prison rules; rather they were compliant. Imprisoned women in Slovenia even seemed not to be resisting the increasingly strict rules; they submitted to these changes as well.

Inevitably, I must address the question of how to actually evaluate imprisoned women’s conformist behaviour. If we understand the smaller degree and less serious forms of damage caused to society by women’s offences as an indication of the ‘successful’ social control of women (Kanduč, 2001), the relatively rare occurrence of non-conforming behaviour in prison can be understood as even more ‘successful’ social control of women. From the perspective of social (gender) control, it is possible to question whether the greater conformity of women can actually be evaluated as something positive (for further reflection on this, see also Kanduč, 2012). A potential future revolt of imprisoned women should be considered to be a welcome sign of their resistance to gender-based dual punishment.

Examples from other countries show that stricter prison rules for women are often accompanied by other disciplinary measures as well. Imprisoned women are often disciplined by being pushed into ‘typical’ gender roles arising from stereotypes about women and traditional views on femininity (Bosworth, 2000; Heidensohn and Silvestri, 2012), for example by being directed into activities such as sewing, knitting (Bosworth, 2000), cooking (Bartels and Gaffney, 2011) and other ‘typically female’ occupations (Carlen and Worall, 2004). This has been seen in Slovenia as well (Maver and Martinjak, 2013; Tadič, 2014). By pursuing these kinds of norms of femininity, a prison’s social role crosses the boundary of ‘only’ enforcing incarceration and enters the sphere of wider social control of women and (re)creation of gender-based power relations (Bosworth, 1996, 2000). Further analyses of this aspect of enforcing prison sentences for women in Slovenia are needed.

Women who were imprisoned in Slovenia between 2005 and 2015 mostly had committed property-related criminal offences; in one or another legal form, most of them ‘stole’ something. When subjecting them to increasingly strict prison ‘rules’, the prison system in which they were imprisoned was imposing an additional form of punishment on them, and thereby depriving them at least of the implementation of the principles of gender equality and non-discrimination. The dilemma about what the bigger ‘theft’ in these relations actually is, is in fact not that complicated. The ‘fundamental values and principles of the legal order’ (Article 45.a, KZ-1, ‘the purpose of punishment’), which the prison for women supposedly protects, on the contrary seem quite problematic.

Limitations

I faced some unexpected obstacles while gathering data. These imposed some limitations on the analysis. All the limitations are connected to the lack of data in the URSIKS annual reports. The data in the reports are mostly presented for individual prisons (but not by the sex of those imprisoned). In the studied period, women in Slovenia were serving prison sentences in only one prison, so the vast majority of the data could be indirectly separated by sex. However, I did not manage to obtain data about women who were serving their sentence in other prisons, not even by getting data directly from URSIKS. Since there were only a few of these cases (0.8 percent of all imprisoned women were serving their sentence in other prisons), I assessed that the deviation in the accuracy of the data is negligible. The lack of data on the category of deprivation of liberty for persons who escaped between 2005 and 2007 also posed a setback for the analysis. It was therefore not possible to establish whether any of the escapes occurred among those who were not serving a prison sentence (for example, they were in custody, detained by the court or on remand). The ‘risk’ to the accuracy of the data is the same for the data on escapes among women and escapes among men. Moreover, a possible deviation from the accuracy of the data further confirms the findings on the rarity of escapes among imprisoned persons. Therefore, I consider the possible deviation in the data on escapes to be not significantly important for the key findings of the analysis. The inconsistency of the data on the number of admissions to prisons in the URSIKS reports (for example, in the reports for 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2013) represents the final limitation. In these cases, I took the figure that appeared first in the report to be the correct one. Differences between figures were small, so I estimate that even this possible deviation in the accuracy of the data is negligible.

Footnotes

Appendix 1

Table 3.

Imprisoned persons in Slovenia, 2005–15.

	Women		Men
	N	percent	N	percent
Out-of-prison benefits misconduct (2005–15)	65	100	417	100
Late return	49	75	196	47
Suspicion of committing an offence	9	14	63	15
Brought back by police	7	11	112	27
Escape	0	0	46	11
Escapes (2005–15)	18	100	344	100
Not returning to the prison	10	56	196	57
From more liberal regime	5	28	98	28
From a health institution	1	6	23	7
From an outside workplace	1	6	4	1
From closed regime	1	6	11	3
While being escorted outside the prison	0	0	12	3
Structure of offences ^a (2005–15)	723 ^b	100	11,938 ^c	100
‘Property-oriented’ offences	581	80	8284	69
against property	445	62	6309	53
against the economy	52	7	528	4
against public health	84	12	1447	12
Physically violent offences	49	7	1368	11
against life and limb	33	5	802	7
against sexual integrity	16	2	566	5
Other offences	93	13	2286	19
Offences against public health – sentenced to unconditional prison sentence (2006–15)	324	100	3803	100
Unlawful manufacture and trade in illegal drugs	280	86	3470	91
Rendering opportunity for consumption of illegal drugs	37	11	288	8
Other offences against public health	7	2	45	1

Sources: URSIKS and SURS annual reports.

Notes:

Among newly admitted persons in the prison.

There were 735 new admissions to the women’s prison, but I could not define the type of offences for 3 of them, because the annual report does not indicate what offence was the reason for imposing the sentence. Additionally, the report is unclear about 12 cases, because the sum of all types of offences does not match the total number of prison admissions.

There were 12,164 new admissions to men’s prisons, but I could not define the type of offences for 66 of them, because the annual report does not indicate what offence was the reason for imposing the sentence. Additionally, the report is unclear about 226 cases, because the sum of all types of offences does not match the total number of prison admissions.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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