Natacha Chetcuti-Osorovitz. The women I met in prison are incarcerated for medium and long-term sentences, meaning at least ten years. They are between 20 and 70 years old and are mostly from working-class areas. My book is based on 96 recurring interviews conducted over 18 months. I went to a women’s unit, which is part of a co-ed correctional facility, every day. Accompanying the women in their day-to-day life allowed for many informal conversations.

What these women have in common is that they are shaped within a continuum of gender-based violence. That is key to the analysis in my ethnographic study. This continuum of violence structures their journeys (before, during, and after their incarceration) and their interactions. This essential element helped me understand how each woman constructed her “personal narrative.” It is reductive to define them based on what they have done; the crimes for which they are incarcerated. Yet the prison system expects precisely that their guilt be recognised. How can these incarcerated women construct their “personal narratives” without taking into account the gendered sociological relationships and the social organisation that shape them, and that also led to their incarceration?

The task was to see how these women, many of whom are not aware of this continuum of violence, would respond to this perpetrator/victim dichotomy. As the title of my book emphasises, the idea of resistance plays a crucial role.

NC. Prison is certainly not a rewarding experience for these women. Unlike for some male prisoners, it is not a way to “climb the ladder”. I created a typology to better understand the different ways in which women incarcerated long term experience prison. There are four distinct types of routes, separate from the violence (visible or otherwise) they have been subject to. The first three apply to those we call “ordinary” prisoners.
In a nod to Virginia Woolf, I named the first category “a damned room of one’s own”. It is in prison that these women become aware of the violence they have previously experienced. It is a phase of reconstruction, during which they seek to reimagine themselves as women. They have to battle strong feelings of guilt out of their “concern for others“, imposed on them by society.

Women belonging to the second type of route, which I labelled “unjustly convicted” are, contrary to the first group, aware of the masculine and physical violence they endured prior to entering prison. For example, this includes women convicted for murdering their partners. They sought to make themselves heard before acting and use prison to reassert their status as victims. These women are defensive and refuse to be considered “inmates.” They aim to distinguish themselves from the other women and emphasize a division between “good” and “bad” victims. 

I also identified a third type of route: “an inevitable sentence”. These are the women who expected incarceration, for example, those convicted of robbery or drug trafficking. For these women, prison is part of their family culture and is sometimes unavoidable. These women have prior knowledge of the prison system, and time spent in prison does not necessarily break family ties.

Foreigners incarcerated for drug trafficking, often called mules, are an exception. These women are extremely isolated inside. Lacking the local codes and language, they are all the more affected by their time in prison.

The final type of route focuses on “self-described political prisoners”, such as Basque prisoners. Analysing the Basque prisoners’ reflexivity process shows how they relate to the disciplinary system, i.e. in precise accordance with their political development and practice.

No matter the profiles, inside these carceral realities, different forms of solidarity may spring up during incarceration. For some, prison can constitute a time of family re-creation. Interpersonal relationships, similar to mother/daughter relationships, are formed, often between two women of different generations. This solidarity is represented in practice by emotional language and meal sharing. I also observed more sisterly relationships, tied in part to a common understanding of masculine domination, or to a shared experience of marginalisation in prison. This is the case for women who committed specific crimes, such as offences against minors. In addition, sexual or romantic relationships between prisoners create a space for their emotions, feelings, and bodies to exist.

NC. The “unjustly convicted” women have a defensive attitude towards other prisoners, and especially in relation to the prison administration. These women are often in contentious moods, but they sometimes cooperate. The “inevitable sentence” prisoners, with their prior knowledge of the codes and the environment, more commonly turn to a collaborationist strategy. A pre-existing understanding of prison gives some of them greater leeway in getting what they want from prison officials.“Ordinary” prisoners often become informants. Relationships among prisoners are much more porous than they first appear.

And, for that matter, informing is a real form of control for the prison administration. It is an integral part of the carceral system and helps build the power structure inside prisons.

On the other hand, individual collaboration with officials is not common among “self-described political prisoners”. They respond by and for the collective and seek to obtain permanent rights within the prison environment.