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Make Sense of Self in Prison Work: Stigma, Agency, and Temporality in a Chinese Women’s Prison

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Abstract

In this study, we highlight the temporality of agency as many choices made by incarcerated women are found to be based not only on their evaluation of the present situation but also on their reflections on the past and anticipation of the future. Guided by feminist methodology, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 52 incarcerated women and 13 female prison officers from one Chinese women’s prison. Before entering prison, individuals are already situated in different social positions embedded in a complex intersectionality of class, gender, family, and other social relations. These differences, sometimes huge, among the incarcerated women, complicate the exercise of power in prison. By exploring self-empowerment strategies in the everyday practice of prison labor in the Chinese penal system, we illustrate, through this study, how incarcerated women’s use of language, their body, and family relationships shapes the way they interpret the meaning of prison work, perceive their position, and sustain alternative identities beyond that of an incarcerated individual. It is argued that acknowledgment of the negotiated nature of power should be understood as being intimately connected to the temporality of agency, which reflects a complex dialectic relationship between domination and resistance in both contingent and consistent ways.

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Notes

  1. The death sentence with a 2-year reprieve is a specific type of penalty in China. The convict could receive a death sentence with a 2-year probation period. If the convict behaves well for those 2 years, his/her death sentence can be commuted to a life sentence or a fixed-term sentence. Similarly, a convict who receives a life sentence also has a chance to get it changed into a fixed-term sentence if he/she behaves well in the first 2 years in prison. Therefore, in the Chinese criminal system, convicts all have a chance to earn a reduction of their sentence and thus have the possibility of walking out of prison earlier if they behave well, unless they get a death sentence with immediate execution.

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Funding

This study was funded by the National Social Science Fund of the People’s Republic of China (19BSH029) and Jiangsu Provincial Social Sciences Research Key Project, the People’s Republic of China (2018SJZDI119).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Nanjing University, Room 409, Heren Building, 163 Xianlin Avenue, Nanjing, 210023, Jiangsu, China

    Liu Liu

  2. Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China

    Wing Hong Chui

  3. Department of Social Work, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China

    Yiqian Hu

Authors
  1. Liu Liu
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  2. Wing Hong Chui
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  3. Yiqian Hu
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Correspondence to Liu Liu.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Liu, L., Chui, W.H. & Hu, Y. Make Sense of Self in Prison Work: Stigma, Agency, and Temporality in a Chinese Women’s Prison. Asian J Criminol 15, 123–139 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11417-019-09298-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11417-019-09298-9

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