Blog #15: Engendering Prisons and History of Women Guards

The history of prisons has been very interesting.  Women in prisons was a very far fetched idea in earlier centuries in many places.  They were not usually viewed as criminals or dangerous and therefor they were given a much easier time while in court.  The judges would often go easier on a woman than they would a man creating a very high inequality in the numbers of me and women incarcerated.  Due to recent crack down on laws and the equaling of men and women, it has created a very large incline in the number of women that are now incarcerated.  There were more differences in prisons than just the shear number of women inside.  The women's prisons were often more laid back; the women were expected to do "normal" woman tasks such as cleaning, cooking, gardening around the prison and basic housekeeping duties.  However, with men working as their correctional officers a lot of rape and sexual assault was reported throughout history.   

Men in prisons had a much different experience.  One of the biggest differences between then and now is the fact that there were many different types of criminals in the prison, instead of now, where our facilities are overly populated with non-violent drug offenders.  Although there is a handful of violent criminals, often times there is a significantly higher amount of the non-violent offenders.  They often were treated very poorly, being ordered to walk in straight lines and do only what they were told.  They were subjected to manual labor that was often very physically strenuous.   Arizona has had a different experience throughout history with prisons because of the higher numbers of women in their facilities compared to the rest of the country.  However, they were very similar to other prisons in the way they treated both the men and the women in their prisons.