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Female Imprisonment: An Ethnography of Everyday Life in ConfinementC.Frois. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan (2017) 231pp. £109.99hb ISBN 978‐3‐319‐63684‐9

2020; Wiley; Volume: 59; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/hojo.12404

2059-1101

Gopala Sasie Rekha,

Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance

Female Imprisonment, written by Catarina Frois, is fascinating reading for anyone with an interest in ethnographic studies of the prison environment, its actors, and life in confinement. Throughout nine chapters plus an introduction and a conclusion, the volume discovers the nature of confinement by listening to prison inmates’ life experiences, crimes, and expectations. While ethnographic study has increasingly become a major methodological tool for prison research, it does not guarantee smooth administrative affairs for scholars as ‘directing boards often limit internally the access of academics researching prison environment’ (p.2). This obstacle brought the author to choose Odemira as part of her project at a female prison, although it is far away from the major city. Odemira offered the author easier authorisation and scheduling with the directing board, which enabled the author to start her work much faster. Overall, the book is well structured. Although the reader is not required to read the chapters in order it is helpful to do so as it gives an understanding of the challenges faced by the author. The book begins with an introductory chapter, which is mainly useful to understand the reason behind her research in Odemira female prison. Starting with a description of Odemira, which is a town in Portugal's south-western region, the author shares her experiences of working in prison facilities all over Portugal. She highlights a few obstacles that she encountered during her visits to other prisons; these obstacles became the main reason that brought the author to Odemira female prison, a prison well known for its poor conditions and its relatively small size. Apart from the description of the condition of the prison, the first chapter shows the good relationships between the inmates and the guards, and Frois's transition to someone who ‘belonged’ (p.5) to the prison. At the end of this chapter, the author expresses the uniqueness in conducting ethnography research in Odemira female prison. The second chapter is dedicated to the changes that have occurred in the recent history of Portuguese penitentiaries, from the most important prison reform of 1983 until the present day. In this chapter, the author highlights the concept and practices of the penitentiary system, which aims to manage prison facilities and implement a humanist world view of prison sentencing. The Portuguese Penal Code emphasised that prison should be the last resort. However, throughout history, most prisons in Portugal faced a long-term crisis as prison sentencing has prevailed as the main form of punishment. The number of inmates has been increasing which causes issues such as overcrowding and a shortage of human resources. In Chapter 2, the author analyses the penitentiary situation through an examination of the Portuguese prison statistics for the last three decades and a summary of Portuguese prison studies. In Chapter 3, Frois presents the history of Odemira, considering both its original purposes and the cumulative practice. Starting with a description of Odemira prison and its managerial problems in the past, the author gives readers an idea of how her research began through the archives of data she utilised as the starting point for her research. A document written by a social worker during her visit and a letter sent to the management are some of the archived documents that helped the author to clarify that Odemira prison was an unsafe prion for the inmates until 1995. It is highlighted that the inmates spent most of their days without any occupation or activities, they were virtually isolated and disregarded by the community, and their living conditions were poor, with risk for both their safety and well-being. There was no heating or hot water. The inmates had neither bed sheet nor bath towel, and inmates slept in the same clothes they wore during the day to keep them warm at night. Following on from this, by using the first report after 1995, the author charts the transformation of Odemira prison to be a prison for women, with the capacity to accommodate inmates with small children in their care. In this part, the book also focuses on the prison staff, their characteristics, and their experiences. In Chapter 4, the author shows what Odemira prison looks like from the inmates’ restricted area. She was able to understand the unspoken reality about the day-to-day life in prison. Starting with observation during lunchtime until dinner time, Frois describes how the afternoon is spent for the inmates. This gives the author the privilege of identifying the type of activities that they can choose and the educational level of the inmates, which, among most, is relatively low. During this time, the author engages in some conversation with inmates, who are mostly from the gipsy community. These inmates share their life experiences, with many similar accounts, each adding pieces of information to each other's account. Through this conversation, which turns out to be more of a focus group session, Frois hears of suicide attempts in the prison and the stigma that the inmates experience by being from the gipsy community, such as how judges perceive gipsies. Frois, in Chapter 5, presents a narrative of how inmates interact with each other, or how they avoid each other, within the spaces available to them. The author considers the psychological and emotional effects on the inmates, which comprises of the loss of liberty, and desirable goods and activities to occupy them. The inmates describe their insecurity regarding their future life outside of the prison, in relation to work, residence, and family life, among other things. However, this chapter is successful in underlining the opportunity of being in confinement, as the inmates were in a position to make a choice and decisions about their future. Most of the inmates admitted that the opportunities to take up several activities and attend the classes helped to ease their worries about their future. This chapter also presents the reader with inmates’ hopes and plans in taking up the classes and activities. They are confident that the skills that they acquire could help them to go into the job market or start a small business. In Chapter 6, the author describes an argument between the inmates and a guard concerning the limitation on tissue rolls and inability to buy toiletries in the canteen due to their salary while working in prison, which was still pending. Although it is not often, a small argument with prison guards can change the atmosphere in the prison, from being a happy place with laughter to a place of much tension. Nevertheless, as a result of the argument, Frois, as the researcher, experienced a change in treatment as the guards became stricter than before. In this chapter, Frois also explained how she was asked to be a person of comfort for some inmates during this time. The next three chapters present inmates’ experience of punishment, inmates’ backgrounds, and their life before being imprisoned. Chapter 7 presents several experiences shared by inmates on their difficulties since childhood that have been carried into their adult life. Chapter 8 focuses on the common issues experienced by inmates, such as economic problems, history of alcoholism, drug use, parental negligence and other forms of neglect, as well as domestic violence. Chapter 9 describes several inmates’ experiences of the process of being arrested, with some describing themselves as being doubly punished. Finally, the concluding section provides interesting interpretations and the emphasis of the main findings of the book. For instance, the author agrees with an opinion of one of the guards she encountered that prison is a mirror of society; what we find in prison is the same as what we see in society, there are both good and bad moments. In this chapter, the author discusses the limitations of empirical and qualitative studies on prison. At the end of the book, Frois claims that her aim to study life behind bars was successful. Despite the distance and the obstacles that she faced during her research, Frois manages to produce a different perspective in this empirical study. She concludes that in order to understand the experience of daily life at Odemira or in any other context, it is essential to become acquainted, especially with the women's life histories, and with one of their most defining life events. Therefore, despite the existing empirical and qualitative works on the prison context and their contribution towards knowledge of the prison environment, she manages to fill the gap by exploring the inmates’ lives both before and after prison.