Engendering Justice: Women, Prisons and Change

The rate of imprisonment in the United States has been rising at exponential rates. In the last two decades alone, the population of incarcerated women has increased by 400 percent. At the heart of these numbers we find not only a certain philosophy of crime and punishment, but also complex and largely unexamined attitudes toward those we imprison. On April 8, 2006, building on an ongoing conversation that the Barnard Center for Research on Women has facilitated through its Women Seeking Justice lecture series, we hosted a daylong conference to investigate the causes and consequences of women’s imprisonment both domestically and abroad. Rebecca Haimowitz weaves segments of this conference and post-conference interviews in this important film that considers the ways in which incarceration is ultimately and inextricably linked to such issues as race, class, education, national identity, and gender conformity.