 Official figures  Implications for classification & rehabilitation  Engendering correctional centres?

 Deputy Minister Ms Hlengiwe Mkhize, raised issues related to slow pace of development of gender-sensitivity within correctional centres  “Mismatch between what is said in public and what is practiced privately”.

 Beyond traditional discourses  Feminist-sociological, Foucauldian discourse analysis & subaltern approaches.  Classification of offenders is not an objective, value-free practise  Detached from power dynamics that are at play in the larger society  I want to understand the classification of women from their voices “subaltern approach”  Unpack the subjectivities surrounding their rehabilitative needs

 Management of order among inmates “perceived dangerousness”  Privileges = security placement  Monitor – offenders behaviour  Similar risks and needs for corrective intervention.

 What is being classified? And How?  Who or what is being excluded by this classification?  What are the criteria for inclusion in the classification? On what basis are some objects excluded?  What person or group of persons constructed this classification? Who accepts or uses it?  Who is authorized now to employ or modify this classification?

 What is the source of authority of the person/s who developed the classification or of those who now use it?  Does any person or group challenge the validity or criticize the effects of this classification? Why?  How was its object regarded before it was classified this way?  How do women classified as offenders, reclassify themselves?

 How dangerous is a female inmate? The more dangerous an inmate, the easier it is to classify a person  The focus is on how to punish; and not ‘why to punish  The social construction of female deviance  The ungendered legal process – police, court & sentencing decisions  Reduced levels of humanity  Psychological needs – targeted

 Identify the object of a classification or reclassification tool  Identify what the classification excludes  Identify the human subjects who devise and use the classification system  Locate the classification system in time & space

 Gendered pathways to incarceration ◦ Contrasting case histories ◦ Racialised women – illegal work shoplifters, e.g “ukuphanda” “sihleli” – feminine and masculine roles ◦ Drug related offending ◦ Childhood abuse = incest – collude with the abuser – telling lies ◦ Indirect victims – ‘mother to my mother, sisters & brothers

 Significant relationships – drug addicted partners, abusive spouses  Resistance to violence – criminalisation  Children  Agency – sex workers ‘robbing and conning clients  Fighting past injustices

 The average correctional centre regarding classification and rehabilitative programming or corrective intervention for women has not changed. ◦ Obsolete programs (anger management, religious pogramming, laundry – earn R10-00 per load; hairstyling) ◦ The gap between inside and outside would be greater than ever ◦ Overcentralisation and unique centrs (very few in each province) ◦ Excessive security, which added to prisons’ centrality and uniqueness would make for the gradual loss of family and other relations ◦ Patterned on men’s prisons, alien to women’s needs.

 Correctional centres = warehouse-prison = not the prison which deters, rehabilitates or punishes, but rather that which neutralizes.  Postponement of women’s offending = shoplifters = distribution of offenders

 “the main justification for classification of offenders is the notion for criminal contamination or contangion (Foucault, 1979a)  There seems to be common sense understanding that criminality is catching and that perhaps it matters more when you catch it (Goldinglay, 2009).