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6 - ‘The World Split Open’: Writing, Teaching and Learning with Women in Prison
- Sharon Grace, Maggie O'Neill, University of York, Tammi Walker, University of Huddersfield, Hannah King, Durham University, Lucy Baldwin, De Montfort University, Leicester, Alison Jobe, Durham University, Orla Lynch, University College Cork, Fiona Measham, Durham University, Kate O'Brien, Durham University, Vicky Seaman
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- Book:
- Criminal Women
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 15 September 2022
- Print publication:
- 18 February 2022, pp 132-148
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Summary
Verity-Fee, Phoenix, Iris and Angel are white, working-class women who are, or who have been, locked out of sight from society in a women's prison in England. They are just four of the women we have had the privilege of collaborating with over the past five years as part of the work we do delivering a prison education programme called the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Programme1. Our collaborative work and writing in this book is organised into two connected chapters. Chapter 6 is about context. Drawing on our experiences of writing, teaching and learning with women in prison, this chapter outlines the prison-based teaching programme that brought us together and explores our theoretical and conceptual approach. Much of our thinking about the punishment of women and prisons is born out of our many conversations with incarcerated women who have taken part in classes or with whom we have worked over the years. In Chapter 7, we go on to provide a critical reflection of our varied epistemologies on the imprisonment of women. We make no excuses for writing in an emotive way, and, in places, exposing our ‘uncomfortable’ and contradictory perspectives. On the contrary – this is first and foremost a feminist project and as such we celebrate subjectivity and individual experience (Reinharz, 1992), which are particularly impossible to ignore in a prison environment (Liebling, 1999). Chapter 7, is also co-authored with Verity-Fee, Phoenix, Iris and Angel but their names appear before ours in the authorship order, partly because their writings and prison journeys take centre stage. Through their poetry and creative writing, the chapter that follows provides a platform for their voices and complex experiences to be heard. We include short biographies as a way to contextualise their written pieces, which, when read together, we hope conveys a sense of their journey through prison.
We came to know each other through the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Programme, a prison-based education programme that brings academics and outside university students into prison to learn alongside, and as equals with, women and men detained inside prison. We provide and draw upon a range of texts as part of the programme.
7 - Women’s Biographies through Prison
- Sharon Grace, Maggie O'Neill, University of York, Tammi Walker, University of Huddersfield, Hannah King, Durham University, Lucy Baldwin, De Montfort University, Leicester, Alison Jobe, Durham University, Orla Lynch, University College Cork, Fiona Measham, Durham University, Kate O'Brien, Durham University, Vicky Seaman
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- Book:
- Criminal Women
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 15 September 2022
- Print publication:
- 18 February 2022, pp 149-172
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Four incarcerated women were involved in the project. They are each strong, kind and thoughtful and, like all of us, have flaws (Fine and Torre, 2006). After several years delivering prison education and working within the prison estate, we have learned not to judge or romanticise the women we work with. We understand that some people detained in prison have committed serious crimes. However, we approach our work with a strong sense of humanity, of seeing the humanity in all of us. We also approach our work from the standpoint that people, no matter who they are, should not be defined by the worst thing they have done in their lives. The Inside-Out programme focuses on mutual engagement, learning through dialogue and critical thinking. Inside-Out does not ‘research’ or objectify the inside students who participate in the programme and does not scrutinise their individual offences. All students are known only by a first name or chosen nickname and past offences – of inside or, for that matter, outside students – are not known to the class. Similarly, the Inside-Out Think Tank members that we write with here are serving diverse sentences for diverse offences, but the specifics of those offences are unimportant and not the focus of our work together.
Through a process of working and writing together, the women originally wrote their contributions as part of the ‘World Split Open’ creative writing project discussed in Chapter 6. However, we have continued to work together since, and during that time have been privy to their experiences within, journeys through, and for one of the women, out of the prison system. We revisited these writings with them and asked them to reflect on who they felt they were at the time of writing, how they feel about that writing now and who they are today. Verity-Fee, Phoenix, Iris and Angel have all contributed to, read and given feedback on this chapter, providing us with the details they wanted including or omitting from their biographies. Two of the women wanted to choose their own pseudonym.
Key themes run through the writing. Given the structural violence inflicted upon women outside and inside prison, outlined in Chapter 6, it is perhaps unsurprising that each of the women represented in this chapter have experienced violence and abuse at some point in their lives and are all from white working-class backgrounds.