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Abstract

Research from many countries has documented the experiences of imprisoned women, who are always a minority within criminal justice and penal systems created and dominated by men. This increasingly substantial research literature has identified the challenges and difficulties faced by women prisoners, many of whom are separated from their children, and has documented the manifold difficulties experienced by women on release and afterwards (Fair, 2009; O’Brien, 2001). Some of these studies have documented not only women’s difficulties in the prison environment but also their strategies of coping and resistance, many researchers adopting qualitative methodologies which prioritise women prisoners’ own voices (Bosworth, 1999; George, 2009; Quinlan, 2010; Lawston & Lucas, 2011). A number of important edited collections such as those by Cook and Davies (1999) and Sudbury (2005), have encouraged perspectives on women’s imprisonment which consider the issues not only through an international lens but also, as seen work by writers including Mechthild Nagel (2008) and Julia Sudbury (2005), endeavour to interweave questions of global trends in the incarceration of women with global capitalism. Traditional jurisdictional boundaries still tend, however, to dominate the research, even though people migrate and some crimes are trans-national in their scope and method, as criminal justice systems, with a few exceptions, are delineated according to jurisdictional boundaries (Aas, 2007). There are, however, important international questions to be explored such as the needs of women prisoners, prisoners’ children, provision for mothers and babies, and problems of family contact. Although much of the recent literature on prisoners and their families has focused on single jurisdictions, the impacts of imprisonment on families and communities go beyond narrow jurisdictional boundaries. As a contribution to the debate, this collection of articles includes contributions focusing on Argentina, South Africa, Senegal and the Republic of Ireland. It is immediately striking that these articles represent an important development in the research, moving the focus beyond the industrialised Anglophone countries from which most previous research has emerged.

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