Gender Bound

Making, Managing, and Navigating Prison Gender Boundaries, 1941-2018

Bibliographic Data

ID2229322
AuthorsJoss Greene (0000-0002-8185-2170, Syracuse University, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume128
Issue4
Pages993-1030
Publication date2023-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Journal of Sociology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-9602 • E-ISSN: 1537-5390
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/723433
OpenAlexW4352978080
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited91

A core feature of prisons is their institutionalization of a fixed male/female binary. Yet, definitions of and responses to prison gender boundary violation are historically variable. This article draws on archival data, 20 months of ethnography, and 136 interviews to investigate the making, managing, and navigating of gender boundaries in California men’s prisons from 1941 to 2018. As prisons transformed over the period of this study, prison administrators managed gender boundaries on the basis of the changing penal logics and resources at their disposal (successively using strategies of segregation, treatment, risk management, and bureaucratic assimilation). Prisoners, in turn, made strategic choices about navigating gender boundaries to deal with the pains of confinement in shifting penal contexts. Prison gender boundaries thus reflect an evolving conflict between the prison’s efforts to label, control, and confine bodies and prisoners’ capacity to resist

Boundary object · Bureaucracy · Criminology · Ethnography · Institutionalisation · Negotiation · Political science · Prison · Sociology · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Gender Studies · Homelessness and Social Issues · Law · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy