The perception of prisons in the writings of women political prisoners

Petkovska, Sanja (2024) The perception of prisons in the writings of women political prisoners. In: Prison environment: a female perspective. Institute of Criminological and Sociological Research, Belgrade, pp. 49-64. ISBN 978-86-80756-68-4

Text petkovski, sanja.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives. Download (305kB)

Abstract

The main aim of the paper is to provide a historical overview of some of the most important women imprisoned for political reasons, whose writings were published and popular, while seeking to extract from them the main tone of perception surrounding their experience of incarceration. For an overview, the political writing of imprisoned women is divided into two main historical periods: pre- and post-Second World War, followed by the contemporary examples of the genre. The rise of writings of imprisoned women in the first period happened as a part of the emergence of the modern world, where the focus is on England and France. Later it appears as a part of the political uprising of socialism and new social movements marked by classics of the genre such as prison writings by Rosa Luxembourg and Angela Davis that were not much elaborated on in criminology and penology in Serbia. In the final paragraph, I open the question of why the genre is massively present in former and current conflict areas, while it was not so present in the region, and I offer some of the initial directions for interpretation. In conclusion, I demonstrate the reasons why prison writings produced by the women imprisoned for political reasons are a useful source for understanding the short-term and long-term impact that incarceration has on the lives of the current and former inmates.

Actions (login required)

View Item