Blog 15

While women comprise just a small segment of all the people serving prison terms in the U.S, there number is rising at a far faster rate than men. “Industrialization created huge wealth disparities which created panic over property crime and increased in mobilization meant more strangers lurking around” (PP). With crime on the rise we saw a great more number of people that according to the law had to be punished. Within the power point 2 different prison models were discussed the Pennsylvania Style and the Auburn Plan however both centered their discipline strategies on separations, obedience and labor. The Pennsylvania style consisted of complete solitary confinement and work for Idle hands. Under this model woman prisoners were not considered real women but rather aberrations of the norm. The work that women performed was typical women’s work which consisted of cooking, gardening and sewing. The Auburn style was more militaristic and involved such things as marching in lock step, no eye contact with each other and beatings as a form of punishment there work consisted of manual labor and work on chain gangs. Although there is no talk of beatings going on with the women’s prisoners there was a lot speculation that was taking about women prisoners being raped. As covered in our material it was stated that “because men are less often than women the victims of sexual assault, men guarding women if more disconcerting than women guarding men.” Because of the crimes that were being committed against female prisoner during their incarceration is initiated a reform to have separate facilities for women and men.