Normalized Violence: Women and Canadian Penality
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This chapter is a consideration of the violence experienced by women in Canadian prisons. In collaboration and discussion with a former woman prisoner, we explore select penal inquiries, practices and anecdotal testimonies and accounts to make more visible the prevalence of violence in the penal system. Within the field, the literature often considers the more overt and interpersonal expressions of violence. By adopting a broader conceptualizing of violence, we reveal how the penal setting generates a landscape of violence through language and routine practices that come together to facilitate and heighten the conditions for violence to occur in the prison in seemingly, normal, benign, and necessary ways. This can include high risk designations, higher classifications, involuntary and forced transfers, deportation, strip-searches, segregation, suicide watch, dry cells, transfers to men’s prisons, excessive force, lack of medical attention and the denial of support or service - all of which are often experienced in violent ways and can culminate into self-harm, suicide, and death. Given its inherently violent nature, we question the use, necessity, and relevance of our penal system as a way to exact justice.