Inside ‘the Carceral’: Girls and Young Women in the Scottish Criminal Justice System

Abstract

As a newly emerging sub-field within human geography, carceral geography offers a unique perspective and understanding of closed spaces. Reflecting this development, three types of closed institutions provide the background for this empirical paper. The nature and experience of these spaces of confinement are explored by using in-depth qualitative interviews with young women in Scotland. The focus on gender-/age-specific characteristics and physical and spatial features reveals the processes of being ‘locked up’, of the perception of confinement and emotional responses to prison, secure care and closed psychiatry. The young women's accounts of these closed institutions are seldom heard in discourses on crime and punishment, providing an in-depth insight into these otherwise enclosed spaces. Considering the geography of three carceral systems, this study extends beyond physical detainment and works towards an understanding of the carceral experience as an emplaced, gendered, embodied, emotional and often repetitive practice. This paper is based on a larger empirical study and uses selected results of this more extensive data to exemplify ‘the carceral’ in this particular context.

Key Words:

• carceral geography
• institutions
• gender
• criminal justice
• Scotland

Acknowledgements

I want to thank Hester Parr and Chris Philo for earlier comments on the paper. I also want to thank the Editorial Board and the referees for constructive reviewing. Most of all, my thanks go to Up-2-Us who assisted me throughout the empirical research and helped tremendously with their advice and practical support, and the girls and young women that took part in the interviews and shared their experiences with me.

Notes

¹ Throughout the paper, ‘girls’ and ‘young women’ are used interchangeably. Although the correct academic terminology would be ‘young women’ (between 16 and 21 years of age), ‘girls’ is used firstly because participants referred to themselves as ‘girls’ and secondly because they often refer back to a time when they were younger than 16 years. To capture all these notions, both terms are used throughout the paper.

² There have been significant changes to the criminal justice system since devolution, which have delivered major reforms in some areas and have contributed to its complexity. These changes in legislation and Scottish Government policy developments have resulted in the creation of over 20 new criminal justice bodies and partnerships (Audit Scotland 2011, p. 6).

³ The statistical analysis is complicated by low overall numbers with small changes leading to large percentual differences. It is further complicated by differentiating remand and convicted prisoners, different definitions of ‘young’ offenders and separate figures for young women within the overall female population. Furthermore there are no means to access and/or compare prison with other closed institutions (e.g. secure care). Researchers agree that numbers on youth crime in general are also not easy to come by (e.g. Burman 2010, p. 28).

⁴ On 4 May 2012, there were 5 female offenders aged between 16 and 21 on remand and 35 sentenced in Scottish prisons (Scottish Government 2012, in Robb 2013).

⁵ On the 31st of July 2011, there were a total of 90 young people in secure care, 33% of whom were female. On 16 October 2012, there were a total of 27 girls aged 12 to 17 in secure care, 2 of whom had been sentenced by the courts (Robb 2013, p. 3).

⁶ Notations in quotations: [-] = one word left out; [–] = more than one word left out; (…) = Significant pause in spoken sequence; every quotation is followed by an indication of the interview which is anonymised with five-number code (refer to table for more detail), page number and indication of speaker with I = Interviewee; Q = Interviewer.

⁷ Scottish: children.