Community (Dis)connection Through Leisure for Women in Prison

Abstract

This article examines incarcerated women's leisure and re-entry into community. Framed in creative analytic practice, two poems reflect two major themes: (1) women's experiences of disconnection from community prior to and deepened by experiences in prison and (2) leisure and community re-entry, which describes complex meanings of leisure for women in prison and implications for return to community. These poems elucidate six often incongruous facets of leisure experience. Structures embedded in leisure service provision stigmatize and limit rather than encourage opportunities for incarcerated women to make personal choices regarding leisure. Leisure also provides contexts of relationship and humanity for women as they re-enter community.

Keywords:

• community
• creative analytic practice
• female offenders
• incarceration
• leisure
• poetic representation

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge Dr. Alison Pedlar as the principal investigator on this study. Now retired, she remains a foundation of encouragement and inspiration for our continued writing. We also thank the women from Grand Valley Institution for Women who participated in this study, staff associated with Correctional Service of Canada, and members of community-based organizations that support federally sentenced women, without whom this research would not have been possible. We also gratefully acknowledge support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council General Research Grants Program.

Notes

The word Aboriginal is generally used in reference to all indigenous peoples in Canada, and encompasses First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples. ceremony (Yuen, 2011; Yuen & Pedlar, 2009).

Stride is a weekly program offered by a community organization called Community Justice Initiatives (CJI). CJI, located in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, strives to build safer and more connected communities through restorative justice principles (CJI, 2008).