Young women’s intimate partner relationships and institutional responses inside a California Juvenile Detention Centre

Abstract

This paper examines the experiences of girls who engage in intimate partner relationships behind bars and describes how institutional actors respond to these partnerships. Current research on sexuality in prisons and detention centres largely focuses on the experiences of men. Those studies that focus on women largely ignore the experiences of underage women. Moreover, current theoretical and empirical work in this area demonstrates how monitoring sexuality is a form of social control and is largely punished behind bars. We discuss how this process works and how girls negotiate relationships in one California Juvenile Detention Centre, drawing on two years of ethnographic research and interviews with incarcerated women. We find that correctional staff often ignore sexual relationships behind bars and provide little or no sexuality and sexual health education. Additionally, we discuss the benefits and challenges to girls participating in relationships in secure confinement. Our work contributes to the small but growing body of research on sexuality behind bars.

Keywords:

• Prison
• ethnography
• young women
• sexuality
• USA

Notes

1 We refer to intimate contact as any kissing, hugging, sexualised touching or actual intercourse.

2 Underage refers to girls under 18 years old. In the context of California, a young woman up to 19 years of age can be held in juvenile detention.

3 The name of this facility and all informant names are pseudonyms.

4 Doing research with incarcerated youth poses multiple ethical issues. It took approximately one year to secure ethics approval for this investigation. However, the largest challenges were attempting to convince young people the researcher not cause them further harm. Additionally, the first author was aware of the power relations between himself and research participants and attempted to help participants during his fieldwork. He did this by conducting life skills training, poetry workshops and workshops on how to gain admission to university. While this did not resolve all ethical issues, it helped provide young people with some kind of a positive experiences during their incarceration.

5 This method of analysing ethnographic data follows the process described in Emerson, Fretz and Shaw (1995).