Behind Bars and Beyond: Exploring Power and Agency in Women's Prisons


Andrea Hill, Queen's University

The criminal justice and education systems intersect, aiming to enhance societal outcomes and cultivate positive choices for individuals. Incarcerated women, experiencing higher victimization trauma rates than men, often lack completed high school education. Recognizing this, the Correctional Service of Canada introduced a women-centred, trauma-informed, gender-responsive framework in 2010 (Booth, 2012; Doueidar and Harris, 2016; Wardrop and Pardoel, 2019). While implemented in federal correctional institutions, its availability is contingent on women’s risk levels, needs, and responsiveness, excluding the prison’s school. In contrast, the Universal Design for Learning, widely adopted in Canadian education, suggests benefits for all (Allen and Wardrop, 2022). This prompts questions about the limited implementation of the gender-responsive framework and the exclusion of applying it in women’s correctional educational programming. This theoretical comparative paper explores the intricate relationship between power dynamics and agency within women’s correctional institutions in Canada. Focusing on the implementation of trauma-informed programs for incarcerated women, I question the extent of agency women possess in decision-making and personal development within the prison context. I raise concerns about promoting better choices and healing from trauma if programs aimed to promote this are not universally offered. Prisons are intended to limit one’s agency and free will, while the criminal justice system simultaneously expects individuals to make their own positive choices for the betterment of society. By this, what are positive choices, and how are women expected to make these decisions if they have not ever experienced a sense of safety, stability, and control? Why is the onus on the individual who likely experienced immense trauma to acquire the skills to make better choices, which ultimately requires some healing from trauma? How can we expect women to heal from trauma in a place that inherently inflicts further trauma? This essay seeks to explore how programs in women’s prison’s function to maintain dynamics of power, and how incarcerated women experience their personal and collective agency while in a system that inherently inhibits agency to maintain the status quo. Bourdieu’s Structures , Habitus, Practices (1990) in the context of the field (prison) and the habitus (unconscious practices of incarcerated women), is compared with Berger and Luckmann’s Social Construction of Reality (1991) to explore how incarcerated women experience everyday life within prison and how systemic structures and the women’s experiences work together to create dynamics of agency and power, with particular attention to how race, class, and gender intersect. The comparative analysis of Bourdieu’s Structures, Habitus , Practices (1990) and Berger and Luckmann’s Social Construction of Reality (1991) reveals the complexities of agency and power dynamics in women’s correctional institutions. In this paper, I argue that the onus placed on incarcerated women to navigate a system that inhibits agency contradicts the goals of rehabilitation. The research suggests a need for a more profound understanding of the connected nature of habitus, structures, and lived experiences to foster resistance and change within correctional institutions. This theoretical comparative analysis holds implications for education, particularly in understanding the impact of trauma-informed programs and the limitations of agency within correctional settings. The findings prompt a re-evaluation of educational pedagogy and policies, advocating for a more inclusive and trauma-informed approach to address the diverse needs of individuals who have experienced conflict with the law. By recognizing the power dynamics and agency constraints within women’s correctional institutions, educators can contribute to the development of more effective programs that facilitate more universal applications of trauma-informed and gender-responsive programming.

This paper will be presented at the following session: