BRIT. J. CRIMINOL.

(2000) 40, 510–531

PRISONS THAT EMPOWER

Neo-liberal Governance in Canadian Women’s Prisons
KE LLY HAN N AH -MOFFAT *

This paper uses recent policy changes in Canadian women’s imprisonment to examine the emergence
of neo-liberal strategies of penal governing. The first section critically assesses the claim that new
strategies of crime control involve a reconfiguration of the responsibilities of state and civil society. In
the second section, the logic and interpretive politics of empowerment strategies are evaluated. An
emphasis is placed on how ‘empowerment’, a term previously associated with radical activists and
social movements, is now as easily used by the Correctional Service of Canada to legitimate and
justify the construction of a regime at five new regional prisons for women. This article reflexively
examines the feminist and Aboriginal knowledges that contributed to the construction of
empowerment as a legitimate and viable penal reform strategy; and it shows how feminist and
Aboriginal reformers’ notions of empowerment can be aligned with very different political
rationalities and used as a strategy of responsibilization by policy makers and correctional officials.
In particular, it shows how these knowledges get linked to penal power and used to create a new regime
of governing and reinforce pre-existing relations of power. Finally, a discussion of the reassertion of
sovereign and disciplinary power, when it comes to governing those who fail to take responsibility for
their own empowerment is provided to show how neo-liberal strategies of government develop
alongside, and operate in conjunction with, other forms of power.

The recent governmentality literature allows for a more complex analysis of the relations
between state power and other modalities of governance, and of how power is exercised
over individuals (Hudson 1998: 585). It gives those interested in the sociology of punish-
ment an opportunity to re-examine the dynamics of penality. Drawing on Foucault’s
(1991: 102) claim that ‘we cannot see things in terms of the replacement of a society of
sovereignty by a disciplinary society and the subsequent replacement of a society by
government; in reality one has a triangle, sovereignty-discipline-government’, O’Malley
(1996: 194) argues that the scholarly objective ‘is not to map the unfolding of an
evolution, but to understand the dynamics of such triangular relations, and the condi-
tions that affect the roles taken by various elements in specific combinations’. Penal
governing reflects a combination of fragmented and flexible exercises of power that
often coexist and are interdependent (Hannah-Moffat 1997). Changes in contemporary
penality cannot be viewed in isolation from past strategies of governing. When combined
with past analysis of penal discipline, the more recent accounts of neo-liberal strategies of
governing can be used to demonstrate changes in penality, and to enhance our

* Kelly Hannah-Moffat, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, Mississauga, ON L5L 1C6, khmoffat@credit.erin.
utoronto.ca
The author would like to thank Mariana Valverde, Paula Maurutto, Anne Marie Singh, and Members of the Toronto History of the
Present Group for their helpful comments on this paper.

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© ISTD: The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies 2000

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understanding of inter-relatedness and interdependence of various strategies and logics

of punishment.
Drawing on classic texts like Discipline and Punish several analyses of juridical and
welfare models of punishment have stressed the exercise of sovereignty and discipline.
Without minimizing the importance and contribution of such studies, it is important to
note that these studies focused primarily, but not exclusively on repression, discipline,
social control and welfare interventions. More recent analyses of neo-liberal strategies of
government draw our attention to how ‘public authorities seek to employ forms
of expertise in order to govern society at a distance, without recourse to any direct
forms of repression or intervention’ (Barry et al. 1996a: 14). Analyses of neo-liberal forms
of governing entail the adoption of a range of ‘techniques of government that create
a distance between decisions of formal political institutions and other social actors,
conceive of these actors in new ways as subjects of responsibility, autonomy and choice,
and seek to act upon them through shaping and utilizing their freedom’ (Rose 1996:
54; also see Rose 1993). In general, Rose (1993, 1996a) argues that governing in
advanced liberal societies includes three elements. First, a new relation between politics
and expertise, wherein the calculative regimes of positive knowledges of human conduct
are replaced by the calculative actuarial regimes of accounting and financial
management (Rose 1993: 295).1 Secondly, a pluralization of new social technologies—a
‘de-governmentalization of the state’, which according to Rose (1993: 296) involves
‘a detaching of the centre from the various regulatory technologies that it sought, over
the twentieth century, to assemble into a single functioning network, and the adoption
instead of a form of government through shaping the powers and wills of autonomous
entities’. And finally, new forms of governing involve a new specification of the subject of
government, where ‘the regulation of conduct becomes a matter of each individual’s
desire to govern their own conduct freely in the service of the maximization of their
happiness and fulfilment that they take to be their own . . .’(Rose 1996a: 59). This neo-
liberal conception of the self-governing subject constructs the individual as a rational,
free, responsible and prudent consumer who is capable of minimizing and managing
risk. In this instance, the exercise of authority is the outcome of free choice.2
Using this perspective, contemporary scholars have argued that techniques of crime
control, prevention and punishment are undergoing a transformation, and that new
modes of governing crime and criminality are emerging (Feeley and Simon 1992, 1994;
O’Malley 1992, 1994, 1996, 1998; Simon 1993; Garland 1996, 1997; Pratt 1997; Hudson
1998; Rose and Valverde 1998). David Garland (1996) in his analysis of neo-liberal
strategies of crime control argues the pervasiveness of high crime rates and the well-
recognized limits of criminal justice agencies have created a new predicament for
governments that demand new strategies3 to cope with social and political demands of
crime control. Garland (1996) outlines some of the dynamic aspects of new neo-liberal
strategies of crime control, governing-at-a-distance and related criminological
knowledges.

1 For further information on the adoption of actuarial techniques of governing in relation to crime and punishment see: Castel

(1991); Feeley and Simon (1992); O’Malley (1992, 1996, 1998), Hannah-Moffat (1999).
2 This is a brief outline of some of the key elements of neo-liberalism. A more comprehensive discussion can be found in: Rose

(1993, 1996a, 1996b); Barry et al. (1996); O’Malley (1996).

3 For a more detailed description of these adaptive strategies see Garland (1996).

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This article builds on these analyses by showing how these strategies and knowledges
have affected recent reforms of Canada’s federal system4 of women’s imprisonment, and
how these new strategies function in a triangular relation with sovereignty and discipline.
It examines the centrality of responsibilization strategies to the Correctional Service of
Canada’s new woman-centred approach to the management and reform of incarcerated
women. The government’s new emphasis on ‘shared responsibility’ and ‘empowerment’
(as outlined by the 1990 Task Force on Federally Sentenced Women and related policy
documents) are analysed. The first section of the article outlines the context of the
recent reform efforts, and shows how new strategies of punishment involve a recon-
figuration of the responsibilities of state and civil society, by an increased reliance on
private organizations and individuals in the government of crime. In the second section,
the logic and interpretive politics of empowerment strategies are evaluated. An emphasis
is placed on how ‘empowerment’, a term previously associated with radical activists and
social movements, is now as easily used by the Correctional Service of Canada. This article
reflexively examines the feminist and Aboriginal knowledges that contributed to the
construction of empowerment as a legitimate and viable penal reform strategy; and it
shows how feminist and Aboriginal reformers’ notions of empowerment can be aligned
with very different political rationalities and used as a strategy of responsibilization by
policy makers and correctional officials. In particular, it shows how these knowledges get
linked to penal power and used to create a new regime of governing and to reinforce pre-
existing relations of power. Finally, a discussion of the reassertion of sovereign and
disciplinary power, when it comes to governing those who fail to take responsibility for
their own empowerment is provided to show how neo-liberal strategies of government
develop alongside and operate in conjunction with other forms of power.

Context of Changes
Recent attempts to restructure and redesign Canadian federal women’s imprisonment
are part of a long and complicated history of struggle (Moffat; 1991; Adelberg and Currie
1993; Shaw 1991, 1993; Faith 1993; Hannah-Moffat 1995, 1997; Boritch 1997). Some of
the longstanding issues and problems raised by reformers (Canadian Association
of Elizabeth Fry Societies—CAEFS, Native Women’s Association of Canada, the women’s
Legal Education and Action Fund—LEAF, and Women for Justice) and several
government commissions that have persisted since the 1934 opening of Canada’s only
federal penitentiary for women—the Prison for Women, include: excessive security,
inadequate accommodation and programmes, geographic dislocation, a lack of
community resources, and a failure to recognize and acknowledge the unique cultural
needs and experiences of Aboriginal and Francophone prisoners.5

4 In Canada, federal and provincial and territorial governments share the responsibility for the operational management and

administration of custodial sentences. The federal government has jurisdiction over all offenders serving custodial sentences of more
than two years, and the provincial or territorial governments have jurisdiction over all offenders serving custodial sentences of two
years less one day. Up until recently, there was only one federal penitentiary for women in Canada––the Prison for Women in
Kingston, Ontario.
5 For a more complete documentation of the nature of these problems see: Axon (1989); Moffat (1991); Shaw (1991); the Report

of the Task Force on Federally Sentenced Women (TFFSW 1990); Faith (1993); Adelberg and Currie (1993); Boritch (1997); and
Hannah-Moffat (1997).

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The government responded to the concerns and criticisms of the public by setting up a
joint community and government task force in March 1989. The Task Force on Federally
Sentenced Women (TFFSW 1990) was established nearly ten years after the last
committee specifically set up to ‘settle’ the issue of federal women’s imprisonment had
faded into obscurity (Shaw 1993: 50). From its inception, the Task Force committee was
unlike any previous government committee in Canada or elsewhere (Shaw 1993: 53).
The Steering Committee of the Task Force was co-chaired by the Canadian Association of
Elizabeth Fry Societies (a prisoners’ rights group) and a deputy commissioner of the
Correctional Service of Canada. Two-thirds of the Task Force members were women.
Two of these women had served federal sentences, and more than half of the members
were from non-government and/or voluntary organizations.6 As Shaw (1993: 53)
indicates, ‘no previous government inquiry into women’s imprisonment had included so
many voluntary sector representatives, or Aboriginal or minority groups, and certainly
no women who had personal experience of prison’. Further, many of the Task Force
members held a feminist perspective and a passionate commitment to change. The
report states unequivocally that it adheres to a feminist philosophy, and it clearly
acknowledges the plight of Aboriginal women prisoners. The Task Force’s mandate was
to examine the ‘correctional management of federally sentenced women from the
commencement of their sentence to the date of final warrant expiry and to develop a
plan which will guide and direct this process in a manner that is responsive to the unique
and special needs of this group’ (TFFSW 1990: 1). This particular Task Force is an
example of the reconfiguration of the responsibilities of the state and private organiza-
tions and individuals in the government of women prisoners. The organization and
selection of Task Force members relied heavily on the ideal of ‘shared responsibility’.
From the outset, the Task Force stated that the responsibility for federally sentenced
women needed to be broadened and shared by the offender, the community and the
government. Drawing on the 1977 Sauve Report on the role of the private sector in
the justice system, Task Force members argued in favour of strong partnerships between
the government and the community. They believed the voluntary sector had an
important contribution to make and role to play in mobilizing citizen participation,
assisting the government in setting priorities and preventing crime, providing critical
analyses of government initiatives, and educating the public (TFFSW 1990: 34).
Similarly, drawing on the 1988 Daubney Report—Taking Responsibility, the Task Force
notes that ‘the community as well as women under sentence have a responsibility to help
repair the harm done and to encourage creative change, which will assist in reducing
further crime’ (TFFSW 1990: 34). The government, in the narratives of these reports, is
portrayed as incapable of reintegrating and reforming offenders without the assistance
of the community and the offender. This understanding of the importance of the
voluntary sector and non-government agents in the reform process contributed to
the unique composition of the Task Force, and ultimately to their support for the ideal of

6 There were a number of struggles and sacrifices made by the Task Force participants in their efforts to produce a vision for change

cooperatively. For example, many of the voluntary organizations expressed their concerns about having to work within the existing
legislative and penal structure, when they believed that a community-based correctional approach was more appropriate (Shaw 1993:
54). There were also concerns about whether the voices of the Aboriginal women and prisoners would be heard and respected.
Despite these reservations, the government and the community worked together to design a prototype for woman-centred
corrections.

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‘shared responsibility’ as a guiding principle for women’s corrections. While these

earlier reports also stressed the importance of the voluntary sector, the Task Force
extends the roles and responsibilities of the community. In the Task Force’s report it is
implied that the community, the offender and the state are responsible for actively
working in partnership with each other to resolve the problem of female crime.
The recommendations of the Task Force were presented in a report to the
government in April 1990, and a few months later the federal government announced
that it would implement the Task Force’s recommendations. The report of the Task
Force, Creating Choices, envisions a new woman-centred correctional model characterized
by the five guiding principles: ‘empowerment, meaningful and responsible choices,
respect and dignity, supportive environment, and shared responsibility.’7 Since the
release of the Task Force’s report—Creating Choices, five new regional prisons for women
designed in accordance with this model were opened. The following sections analyse the
politics and interpretations of ‘shared responsibility’ and ‘empowerment’ to show how
the discourse of reformers and recent practices reveal the presence of responsibilizing
strategies of government.

Renegotiating boundaries: responsibilizing the community and the offender8

Of particular interest is Garland’s (1996: 452) description of responsibilization strategies,
which ‘involves the central government seeking to act upon crime not in a direct fashion
through state agencies (police, courts, prisons, social work etc.) but instead acting
indirectly, seeking to activate action on the part of non-state agencies and organizations’.
Responsibilization strategies involve a series of new techniques and methods,
‘whereby the state seeks to bring about action on the part of private agencies and
individuals—either by simulating new forms of behaviour or by stopping established habits’
(original emphasis, Riley and Mayhew 1980, cited in Garland 1996: 452). While the
use of volunteers and private organizations in punishment is not new, the relations
between the state and these agents has changed. This new neo-liberal technique and its
related knowledges and objectives are representative of a new form of government at-a-
distance.
Through strategies like responsibilization, the central government is ‘seeking to
renegotiate the question of what is properly a state function and what is not’ (Garland
1996: 453). According to Garland (1996: 453) ‘the reoccurring message of this
approach is that the state is not and cannot effectively be, responsible for preventing
and controlling crime’, and as a result new responsibilization strategies depend on the
creation of partnerships between the state and ‘private’9 organizations and individuals.
This devolution of the state’s responsibility for crime prevention and offender reform is

7 More detailed descriptions of these terms can be located in Creating Choices (TFFSW 1990) and the Draft Correctional Program

Strategy for Federally Sentenced Women––Abridged Version (CSC 1994a). Shaw (1993: 55–6) and Hannah-Moffat (1995) provide more
detailed summaries of these principles.
8 This paper concentrates mainly on the use and emergence of responsibilization strategies in federal women’s corrections.

However, these strategies are also apparent in some of the recent provincial correctional reforms in Ontario (see the policy document
Women’s Voices, Women’s Choices) and in Nova Scotia (see the policy document Blueprint for Change).
9 The term ‘private’ is meant to refer to all non-state organizations, associations and companies including but not limited to

charitable and philanthropic organizations, volunteers, churches, community groups and private businesses and corporations.

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occurring at a number of levels in Canadian women’s penality. First, non-governmental

agencies and volunteer services are increasingly expected to resource and participate as
‘partners’ in crime prevention strategies and in the development and implementation of
offender reformation strategies. The Task Force on Federally Sentenced Women like
other recent task forces stresses the ‘shared responsibility’ of the offender, community
and state in the reform process.10 In keeping with this ‘message’, the preface of the report
of the Task Force on Federally Sentenced Women—Creating Choices notes that community
partnerships are central to the production and implementation of long-term solutions to
the problems that have plagued the Canadian federal female offender.
The Task Force’s conceptualization of shared responsibility emphasizes the responsi-
bilities of the prisoner, the government and the community. The report notes that:
governments at all levels, correctional workers, voluntary sector services, businesses, private sector
services and community members generally must take responsibility as inter-related parts of society.
This is essential in order to foster the independence and self-reliance among federally sentenced
women to allow them to take responsibility for their past, present and future actions. To make sound
choices, women must be supported by a coordinated comprehensive effort involving all elements in
society. (TFFSW 1990: 111)

Further, this principle is said to be important because:

the holistic programming and multifaceted opportunities which support an environment in which
women can become empowered can only be built on a foundation of responsibility among a broad
range of community members. Currently, because the Correctional Service of Canada has legal
obligations for federally sentenced women, responsibility for federal women is too narrowly assigned to
correctional systems. (emphasis added; TFFSW 1990: 111)

Under the heading ‘supportive environment’ the Task Force clearly emphasizes the
responsibility of the community in the empowerment of the woman prisoner, while
simultaneously redefining the responsibilities of the Correctional Service of Canada.
The theme of responsibilization is further stressed in government discourses that stress:
(i) a new focus on community links and the role and responsibility of the offender for
her reform and reintegration;
(ii) the increased use of non-government, community expertise, volunteers and
resources to meet the individual and collective needs of federally sentenced
women (NIC 1992: 6), including an increased reliance on contracting-out
services and using volunteer labour where possible;
(iii) the redefinition of the state as a coordinator of correctional services and a
facilitator of reintegration for the offender who is in some cases portrayed as
a ‘consumer’ or ‘client’.
These discursive shifts are examples of how penality in certain situations is being
reconfigured through the responsibilization of the community and the offender.

10 Some of these reports include Sauve (1977) The Task Force on the Role of the Private Sector in Criminal Justice; Daubney (1988) The

Report of the Standing Committee on Justice and the Solicitor General on its Review of Sentencing, Conditional Release and Other Related Aspects of
Corrections––Taking Responsibility; Task Force on Federally Sentenced Women (1990) The Report of the Task Force on Federally Sentenced
Women––Creating Choices. Ottawa: Solicitor General of Canada.

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One could argue that the state’s increased reliance on volunteer labour and on
contracting out vaguely defined ‘community services’ is a strategic method of reducing
the costs associated with imprisonment by reducing programme staff, and showing the
public that they are ‘getting tough’ by eliminating ‘perks’ and becoming more efficient,
or that it is symptomatic of the prison’s failure. However, it is more complicated. These
plans also show how the state is simultaneously shifting responsibilities and taking on a
new ‘coordinating and activating role’ that in time may develop into new structures of
support, funding and information exchange (Garland 1996: 454). This new role is
reflected in later reports (CSC 1996, 1998), which show how the Correctional Service of
Canada is also attempting to coordinate different community initiatives and competing
community interests to devise a meaningful ‘community strategy’ for federally sentenced
women. Such changes reflect the development of new networks of accountability
and responsibility that require further investigation. Involving the ‘community’ and
advocacy groups in the development of and programming for the new prisons offers
some governmental advantages: the government is able to capitalize on inexpensive
voluntary labour and expertise, to limit criticisms of government initiatives by allow-
ing and encouraging advocates’ participation in prison planning, to gain legitimacy,
and to partially restore the public’s faith in the state’s ability to resolve the persistent
problem of federal women’s imprisonment in a meaningful way. More generally, it
allows for a ‘de-governmentalization of the state’ (Rose 1993: 296) and in particular
for a new form of government-at-a-distance, where quasi-autonomous correctional
authorities proliferate and assume responsibility for activities previously monopolized by
the penal welfare state.
Aside from the political and practical limitations of such discursive strategies,11
Corrections Canada’s emphasis on shared responsibility and community partnerships
does reflect a discursive shift towards a strategy of responsibilization. The approach to
governing women prisoners is no longer conceptualized as the sole responsibility of the
federal government, but rather as the collective responsibility of the community and
even the responsibility of the offender. Even though the government’s responsibility for
the reform and reintegration of offenders has in some ways clearly shifted to community
agencies and the offender, the government’s new strategies of responsibilization do not
entail the simple off-loading of state functions (cf. Garland 1996: 454). Instead, a new
form of government-at-a-distance emerges. It consists of ‘a new mode of governing
[offenders] with its own forms of knowledge, its own objectives, its own techniques and
apparatuses’ (Rose and Miller 1992; cited in Garland 1996: 454). The following analysis
shows how Corrections Canada’s reliance on empowerment clearly indicates both a new
mode of government-at-a-distance and a continued reliance on past modes of disci-
plinary government.

11 Not surprisingly, the implementation of the recommendations of the Task Force and the operational plan for the new regional

prisons was fraught with difficulties. A series of practical and political problems raise important questions about the practical use and
interpretation of a ‘shared responsibility’ and related strategies that suggest the state can work in ‘partnership’ with individuals and
communities. Some sceptical reformers now believe that the government’s rhetorical commitment to shared responsibility and
community involvement expressed in and during the Task Force merely masked a more subtle governmental agenda and intention to
retain centralized control over planning and decision making.

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Creating an Empowerable Subject: Supporting Knowledges

Rose and Valverde (1998: 575) argue that ‘subjects are constituted in a whole variety of
ways in different legal contexts and forums’, and that ‘each of these subjectifications has
a history, each is differently suffused by the norms and values of positive knowledge’. One
of the preconditions for a new form of governing appears to be the ability to reconstruct
subjectivity, and in this case the criminal subject. In exploring this element of
governance, Garland (1996: 461) suggests that ‘increasingly dualistic, polarized, and
ambivalent’ criminological knowledges play a critical role in this reconstruction. He
suggests that ‘there is a criminology of the self, that characterizes offenders as rational
consumers, just like us; and there is a criminology of the other, of the threatening outcast, the
fearsome stranger, the excluded and embittered’ (Garland 1996: 461). The ‘criminology
of the self’ which offers a neo-liberal image of the responsible and rational individual is
quite apparent in feminist, Aboriginal and reformers’ portrayals of the women prisoner.
Of interest here, is how critical feminist and Aboriginal ideals are embraced by the state,
in this case the criminal justice system, and how the narratives of reformers shape and are
integrated into certain institutional policies and practices.
Feminist criminology has expanded our awareness and understanding of the issues
and experiences of women in conflict with the law. Feminist research on women
offenders, victims and workers in the criminal justice system has revealed a number of
disturbing patterns of discrimination and ignorance. Feminist/Aboriginal advocates on
the Task Force argued that correctional policies should respond to and reflect the
specific and unique reality of the female offender. This reality is characterized by
qualitative differences in the types of crime committed by women and their more general
social, economic, cultural and political experiences. In short, echoing the concerns of
critical criminologists and political lobbyists, Task Force members argued that women in
conflict with the law were different from their male counterparts on a number of levels.
They argued that women tend to commit fewer and less violent offences than men;
women have fewer vocational and educational skills, more extensive histories of physical
sexual and emotional abuse and substance abuse problems and a higher likelihood of
single parenthood; and that a penal system designed with men in mind could not meet
the specific needs of women prisoners. The research completed for the Task Force
verified these claims and stressed that ‘issues such as poverty, racism, wife battering, and
sexual abuse are central to women’s crime’ (TFFSW 1990: 83). The Task Force also
argued that each of these factors is further complicated for Aboriginal and visible
minority women who carry an additional burden of cultural alienation and racism
(TFFSW 1990; Sugar and Fox 1990). In this respect, they recommended that culturally
specific accommodation be made for Aboriginal women who are over-represented in the
Canadian federal prison population12 through a healing lodge.
The report of the Task Force—Creating Choices uses a ‘criminological discourse of the
self’. It resists the pathologization and medicalizing of women’s criminality as abnormal

12 Aboriginal women represent only 3 per cent of Canada’s female population, however, they make up 15 per cent of Canada’s

federal female prison population. There is evidence to suggest that the problems of physical and sexual abuse and substance abuse
are magnified for Aboriginal women in prison (CSC 1997: 11). The analysis in this paper examines the general plans and narratives
informing the development and operation of the new regional prisons for women. While these plans are generally applicable to the
Aboriginal healing lodge (designed to meet the needs of Aboriginal women prisoners), this prison has some separate policy
guidelines that are not discussed in this paper.

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or irrational. Instead, it empathetically states that women in prison have more in

common with other women than they do with male inmates, and therefore, programmes
and services should be designed to meet the local needs and circumstances of women
(TFFSW 1990). In spite of its recognition of material and cultural differences between
women, the Task Force’s feminist articulation of a woman-centred politics rests on the
assumption that women as a group have a common set of experiences and that as a group
women are commonly disempowered. ‘Empowerment’, in Creating Choices (TFFSW 1990:
105–6), is meant to highlight that the structural inequities experienced by women
prisoners are similar to broader gender inequalities. It is noted that the ‘research and the
words of federally sentenced women have repeatedly stressed the connections between
women’s involvement in the criminal justice system and the inequalities, hardships, and
suffering experienced by women in our society’. Empowerment is connected to the
perception that women prisoners, like women generally, lack self-esteem and, as a result
they are believed to have little power to direct their lives: ‘they feel disempowered, unable
to create or make choices, unable to help create a more rewarding, productive future,
even if realistic choices are presented to them’ (TFFSW 1990: 105). The Task Force
locates the disempowerment of women in two sites: in the structural arrangements of
society and in the woman herself, with an emphasis on the latter.
To support these claims the Task Force and related policy documents cite several
studies and statistics that illustrate the high incidences of racism, sexism, violent victim-
ization, educational and employment barriers facing women in society, and more acutely
women in prison. The Task Force argues that ‘the attitudes, barriers and suffering, which
are consequence of sexism and racism erode the self esteem of women in general’
(TFFSW 1990: 106). This incidence of ‘general low self esteem’ is particularized to the
federal female offender. For example, they note:
federally sentenced women typically are poorly educated, unemployed, and have survived physical
and/or sexual abuse. Their life circumstances, along with feelings of guilt, fear, anxiety, alienation and
confusion which are often elicited when they are apprehended and sentenced by the justice system,
combine to produce a group of women with extraordinarily low self esteem. (TFFSW 1990: 106)

It is further argued that low self-esteem reduces a woman’s ability to cope, and it creates
circumstances where women are unable to accept responsibility for their actions and
choices. Self-destructive behaviour, as well as criminal behaviour, is attributed to a
woman’s low self-esteem and disempowerment. The Task Force suggests improved self-
esteem and the empowerment of women will give women the ‘ability to accept and
express responsibility for actions taken and future choices’ (TFFSW 1990: 107). These
statements are used to reaffirm a commitment to woman-centredness and reinforce a
construction of women’s shared disempowerment and marginalization.
This research offers both a social positivist discourse on the causes of crime (poverty,
racism, abuse etc.) and a responsibilizing discourse. Feminist and Aboriginal
knowledges are selectively used to support a responsibilization strategy and to legitimate
the expansion of women’s prison capacity. Not surprisingly, however, feminist and
Aboriginal understandings of women’s disempowerment and its remedy are not neatly
incorporated into correctional narratives and practices. Quite independently, the
Correctional Service of Canada has redefined and constructed empowerment and
notions of shared responsibility so that they are compatible with its own independent
strategy of penal government. In this context, a ‘critical feminist criminology of the self’
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is used to construct a rational, prudent and reformable subject,13 who can be empowered
so as to change her life circumstances and to take responsibility for her future and past
criminal behaviour.

The ‘Will to Empower’ 14

According to O’Malley (1992: 258) ‘what influences the spread of technologies is most
likely to be their appropriateness to particular ends, and this in large measure will be
related to political struggles which establish programs on the social agenda’. One of the
most significant practical problems with attempts to integrate a selected ideal of
empowerment into a penal context is the premise that prisons can be designed to
empower prisoners. Empowerment at least in a penal context loses its conflictual charac-
teristics that are articulated in earlier counter-hegemonic social movements, and it is
now as easily embraced by the state as by reformers, thus demonstrating its malleability as
a strategy of governing. The ‘responsibilizing’ quality of this empowerment strategy
allows it to combine and coexist with the more coercive, centrally defined goals of
Corrections Canada.
Strategies such as empowerment can assume multiple meanings depending on how
they are used and by whom. Empowerment is a common term. This term was originally
associated with social movements in the 1960s and 1970s that sought radical political
changes in social relations. More recently, the concept of empowering individuals
(whether they be the poor, workers, patients, immigrants, students, citizens or prisoners)
has become a common tenet of several diverse political strategies and policy initiatives.
The growing mass of policy and academic literature in education, health, legal, and
labour reform and indeed penal reform confirms the widespread acceptance of
empowerment strategies. Some examples of scholars who have documented these shifts
in policy include Shaw (1996), Cruikshank (1993) and Kendall (1993), Townsend
(1998) who analyses changes in therapeutic regimes, Snider (1995) who examines these
shifts in terms of punishment, Kinsman (1995) who examines Aids activism and Young
(1994) who analyses drug and alcohol programmes for pregnant women.
Few scholars, however, have critically and reflexively evaluated the logic and inter-
pretive politics of empowerment. Cruikshank (1994: 31–32) in her analysis of technol-
ogies of citizenship and the war on poverty argues that proponents of empowerment
often fail to acknowledge how these strategies dichotomize the powerful and the
powerless, uncritically stress the maximization of empowerment itself, and define
empowerment as simply a qualitative increase in the amount of power possessed by an
individual. All of these problems are evident in the Task Force’s construction of
empowerment, in feminist and Aboriginal discourses and in correctional policy
documents. For example, in the Task Force the feminist assumption of common
disempowerment illustrates some of the undeniable demographic and experiential
similarities of women as a group, but it obscures difference. In particular, differences on
the basis of race, class, and sexual orientation and more importantly power are

13 For a more detailed description and analysis of the ‘prudent subject’ see O’Malley (1996).
14 The phrase ‘will to empower’ is taken from Cruikshank (1994).

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minimized (Hannah-Moffat 1995).15 This characterization of women prisoners (as being

the same as ‘free women’) is critical to the acceptance and legitimacy of empowerment as
a strategy of penal governance. The lack of attention to differential relations of power,
particularly as they occur within the prison contributes to a shift in government. Feminist
and Aboriginal knowledges are used by policy makers ‘to reorient government action
and to create new techniques for acting on the problem of crime’ (Garland 1996: 451).
Similarly, Cruikshank (1994: 32) following Foucault, argues that the concept of
government refers to the practices and relations of power that operate well beyond the
state, and that ‘technologies of citizenship such as empowerment are means of acting
upon the actions of others’. She notes that
technologies of citizenship are the means by which the government works through rather than simply
against the subjectivities of the poor. The poor are governed, so to speak but not strictly by the
government or the state. (Cruikshank 1994: 32–3)

Earlier examples of the responsibilization of the community and their involvement in

the reform and operation of the new prisons for women show how a woman prisoner is
also now governed by individuals and groups outside of the state, and how well-
intentioned feminist reformers also play a critical role in the governance of the women
prisoners.
The widespread use of the term empowerment in everyday language has gradually
depoliticized or deradicalized the language of empowerment. This malleable character-
istic of empowerment strategies is important when considered along with the claims
made by Cruikshank (1994), who argues ‘the will to empower has created a new series of
relationships and conceptualizations of empowerment in academic disciplines, social
services, neighbourhood agencies, social movements, and political groups’. As in many
contexts, in Canadian women’s penality empowerment is uncritically championed by
feminist reformers and bureaucrats alike. Arguably, part of the appeal of empowerment
is its ability to informally and subtly govern marginalized populations in a way that
encourages them to participate in their own reformation, while simultaneously
appearing to be a critical alternative. As Cruikshank (1994: 34–5) notes:
the logic of empowerment targets the capacities of the powerless, measuring and seeking to maximize
their actions motivations and interests . . . here power works by soliciting the active participation of the
poor in dozens of programmes on the local level, programmes that aim at the transformation of
the poor into self sufficient, active, productive and participatory citizens.

In this case, the feminist narrative of empowerment contributes to a unique and new
method of governing the prisoner. Cruikshank (1994: 35) argues that the will to
empower marginalized groups is often characterized by four features: it is established by
experts, it often entails a democratically unaccountable exercise of power in that the
relationship is typically initiated by one party seeking to empower another; it depends on
knowledge of those to be empowered, which is often found in social science and the self-
description or self-disclosure of the subject to be empowered; and finally it involves both

15 The most fundamental difference between women prisoners and other women is that they are not free! Saying that all women are

the same obscures wider relations of power not only between institutions and individuals but between women! The concept of
‘woman-centred corrections’ gives a priority to gender above any or all other factors. For a more detailed analysis of this point see
Hannah-Moffat (1995).

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 PRISONS THAT EMPOWER

a voluntary and coercive exercise of power upon the subjectivity of the empowered. Each
of these characteristics is evident in Canadian women’s penality.
This increased reliance on empowerment politics indicates a much wider systemic
shift in governing, wherein governments and corporations with little or no interest in
politicizing disempowered groups have adopted discourses of empowerment to advance
a neo-conservative agenda. In coercive institutions, like the prison, governing is most
commonly associated with the external policing and regulation of an individual’s
behaviour. An emphasis on strategies such as empowerment, however, suggests a greater
reliance on self-governing. In this setting, empowerment discourses make links between
the aspirations of individuals and those of government, and they contribute to the forma-
tion of prudent subjects prepared to take responsibility for their actions, and for whom
the ethic of discipline is part of their mental fabric and not a product of external policing
(cf. Rose 1993). The following examines the instability of empowerment’s meaning and
illustrates on a material level some of the limitations and contradictions presently
inherent in the use of a language of empowerment to achieve organizational changes.

Empowerment: A Flexible Strategy of Government

Iris Young (1994: 49), in her article on the treatment and punishment of female drug
addicts notes that ‘empowerment is like democracy: everyone is for it, but rarely do they
mean the same thing by it’. Young’s comments capture some of the difficulties associated
with the current emphasis placed on empowerment in women’s penal and treatment
regimes. In this context, at least two interpretations of empowerment can be identified.
For feminists, empowerment (ideologically, politically and economically), is tradi-
tionally embraced as a way of transforming the lives of women by limiting gender
oppression through a restructuring of power relations that allow women to make choices
and regain control of their life. For example, Young (1994) notes that for feminists,
service providers and activists empowerment can mean ‘the development of individual
autonomy, self-control, and confidence’ and/or ‘the development of a sense of
collective influence over social conditions in one’s life’ (Young 1994: 49).
Within a prison setting the accomplishment of empowerment, as defined by Young
and social advocates is particularly problematic because the flexibility to make choices
and control one’s surroundings does not exist. In general, the feminist interpretation of
empowerment and reliance on this strategy of reform dismisses a broader institutional
context and history. Prisons are organized to limit individual expressions of autonomy,
control and choice. They are sites of repression, wherein there is an undeniable
imbalance in the relations of power between the ‘keepers’ and the ‘kept’. Rarely are the
‘keepers’ able or willing to relinquish their power, to facilitate empowerment. Women
prisoners have little influence, collective or otherwise, over the conditions of their lives
while incarcerated. In the end, techniques typically associated with enabling
empowerment are dominated by the prevailing organizational structure.
A ‘women-centred empowerment model’ of punishment feminizes the discourse and
practices of imprisonment without fundamentally challenging or restructuring the disci-
plinary relations of power in prisons. This argument is born out by the adoption
of empowerment discourse in state narratives on women’s penality. Ironically, the
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 HANNAH-MOFFAT

Correctional Service of Canada claims it is committed to empowering women prisoners.

However, in spite of its traditional use, empowerment for the Correctional Service of
Canada is not about a fundamental restructuring of relations of disciplinary power in
the prison, but rather adding a new dimension to existing relations by using
empowerment strategies to responsibilize. New strategies of responsibilization appear to
be less intrusive and less regulatory, and as such they are not usually contested by
reformers.
The difficulty is that strategies of empowerment tend to resonate with multiple and
conflicting objectives. While the strategy of empowerment coincides with the feminist
objectives and intentions of the reformers, it is also compatible with the longstanding
goals and objectives of correctional officials. Empowerment is alternatively defined by
Corrections Canada as ‘the process through which women gain insight into their
situation, identify their strengths, and are supported and challenged to take positive
action to gain control of their lives’ (CSC 1994: 9). Empowerment in this context has a
different meaning from empowerment in feminist reform narrative. For Corrections
Canada, empowerment is clearly linked to responsibility and self-esteem. It is noted
that:
the inequalities and reduced life choices encountered by women and experienced even more acutely by
federally sentenced women, have left them with little self-esteem and belief in their power to control
their lives . . . Low self-esteem can contribute to the inability to plan for the future, take responsibility for
one’s actions and violence against others. Improving self-esteem increases the ability of each FSW
[federally sentenced woman] to make choices and gain more control in her life. Empowerment is a
process through which women gain insight into their situation, identify their strengths, and are
supported and challenged to take positive action to gain control of their lives. (CSC 1994)

Corrections Canada further indicates that their empowering processes ‘acknowledges

and holds FSW [federally sentenced women] accountable for their actions, but also
recognizes their actions in a wider social context’ (CSC 1994: 9). While previous welfare
penal strategies of rehabilitation view the state as responsible for the offender’s
reformation, this empowerment strategy makes the offender responsible for her own
rehabilitation. The offender, in this new correctional framework, is responsible for her
own self-governance and for the minimization and management of her needs and risk to
the public or herself, similar to what O’Malley (1992) calls prudentialism. Prudentialism
refers to a construct of governance which removes the key conception of regulating
individuals by collectivist risk management, and ‘throws back upon the individual the
responsibility for managing their own risk’ (O’Malley 1992: 261). Through this type of
responsibilization, the individual offender becomes responsible and accountable for the
proper management of her own risk or potential risk.
It is implicitly accepted that the prison does not rehabilitate the offender, and instead
that it is the woman who makes prudent choices that ensure a responsible, self-sufficient
future. The responsibility of Corrections Canada is to provide women opportunities to
facilitate this process. This strategy of neo-liberal penality is different from past welfarist
models. A neo-liberal penality:
. . . seeks through the calculus of punishment primarily to press upon the offender (and the potential
offender) the model of individual responsibility. Accepting responsibility for one’s actions does not
imply accepting or obeying any specific set of morals. It implies accepting the consequences of one’s
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actions. The individuals may choose, are free to choose, in a way and to a degree never envisaged by
normative disciplinarity—but if those choices lead into criminal offending, they must take the burden
of their choice. (O’Malley 1994: 15)

Given this understanding of empowerment by the Correctional Service of Canada the

provision ‘meaningful and responsible choices’ in new woman-centred prisons takes on
a new meaning. Empowerment in the prison context becomes a technology of self-
governance which requires the woman to take responsibility for her actions in order to
satisfy the objectives of the authorities and not her own. The choices women are
empowered to make are censored and predetermined by the wider penal structure.
Women in prison are only allowed limited choices that are deemed by the administration
as meaningful and responsible and not necessarily by the prisoner. For example,
programming choices about treatment, such as feminist therapy or Alcoholics
Anonymous, are deemed meaningful and responsible choices, to escape or riot is not
meaningful or responsible, even though these choices may be truly empowering and
liberating to the prisoner. The determination of a meaningful and responsible or
empowering action is ultimately done by judges, parole boards, correctional officers and
therapists, not by the prisoner. Under a new self-governing regime of empowerment
women can be regulated through the decisions they make without resorting to an overt
expression of power. These new technologies steer choices and prevent misbehaviour
rather than deter through punishment.
For example, the new prisons have a correctional programme strategy that was
designed to ‘ensure that women receive the most effective programmes at appropriate
points in their sentence’ (CSC 1994: 4). This strategic document identifies four core
programmes (Abuse and Trauma, Substance Abuse, Parenting, and Education and
Employment Skills). These programmes are seen by the government as representative of
the primary needs of women in prison. Their existence provides women with the
opportunity to make ‘meaningful and responsible choices’ within a ‘supportive environ-
ment’, and thus to be empowered. More specifically, the policy literature supporting the
substance abuse programme suggests that programming should be based on the
‘premise that learning to make well-informed choices and accepting responsibility for
those choices is key for women to take control of their lives’ (CSC 1995: 1). This
programme, like the others, is based on a ‘model of self change’ rather than traditional
therapy, which is constructed as a more in-depth form of treatment for past abuses. The
‘self-change model’ places responsibility for risk minimization and change squarely on to
the shoulders of the offender. However, if a known substance abuser chooses not to
participate in these programmes she is constructed as being in denial or as defiant and
uncooperative, and as a result more risky. Women may choose to participate in certain
programmes simply because they know that it will improve their chances for
parole/release. Nonetheless, women can be encouraged to participate in their own
empowerment or responsibilization without threats. She is expected to constantly
monitor herself and control her own risk-generating behaviour. When she fails, more
coercive disciplinary techniques of government are mobilized. For example, a positive
urine test for drugs or visible signs of drug or alcohol use can lead to institutional charges,
segregation, revocation of privileges, cancelled visits or in the case of community
supervision—return to prison. However, it is also evident that ‘these new techniques do
not so much replace these traditional measures as embed them in a far more
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comprehensive web of monitoring and intervention’ (Simon 1994: 33). In some

respects, models of self-help and responsibility ultimately re-legitimate the prison and
the continued reliance on discipline.16
Arguably, the governance or regulation of women prisoners is transformed into a
question of self-governance through strategies of empowerment and shared responsi-
bility. Power is exercised through the formation strategies designed to encourage
subjects to take responsibility for their actions with limited involvement of external
mechanisms of policing. In this sense, individuals become responsible for carrying out
the actions that were previously state functions. The new or renewed emphasis on
responsibility merges with old correctional methods of disciplining and reforming the
irresponsible deviant. The proposed new solution to governing or regulating the inmate
is not located in the capacity of the penal regime to alter the behaviour of the prisoner,
but rather in self-governance or regulation. While the offender is still targeted for
punitive interventions, accountability for reformative results shifts from the state (as in a
welfare-based model) to the offender.
The individual prisoner is now responsible for her own discipline, which is facilitated
by social science professionals upon the request/choice of the prisoner. Empowerment
defined in terms of responsibility has a self-disciplinary quality that allows the state to
govern-at-a-distance. Empowerment, in penal settings, can be used to justify and
legitimate a variety of disciplinary techniques through the language of responsibility. It
implicitly erodes the notion that Corrections Canada, alone, is responsible for the
reform of women prisoners. In effect, an ‘empowering-responsibilizing strategy’ leaves
the central state more powerful than before, with an extended capacity for action and
influence (Garland 1996: 454). By attending programmes such as parenting, life skills,
substance abuse, anger management and vocational classes women are expected to
conform to a series of normative standards. Paradoxically, a failure to participate in
programmes can result in institutional discipline such as a denial of parole or a
community pass, a higher security rating and in extreme cases of deference or resistance,
segregation. An unwillingness to participate in an institutionally defined regime of
empowerment can result in nothing other than punishment. And in certain cases, being
denied parole for not participating in institutional programmes can be justified in the
name of expecting and encouraging empowerment. Ironically, it can be argued that
women are now being sent to prison and kept longer in prison to be empowered!
Empowerment is used to justify, rationalize and legitimate a variety of disciplinary
techniques through a parallel discourse of responsibility. Having the offender take
responsibility or ownership for their actions is a paramount concern for correctional
institutions. A concern that coincides with feminist demands for the integration of
women’s experiences and a feminist strategy of empowerment, which after all does not
imply or necessitate the displacement of offender accountability or ‘agency’. In fact,
feminists have fully acknowledged that the negation of personal accountability or
responsibility often results in the ‘disempowerment of women by rendering them
harmless victims, thus stripping them of self-determination’ (Allen 1987; Shaw 1991,
cited in Kendall 1993: 14). In short, it is agreed by feminists that women prisoners are not
simply victims, but that their life circumstances and social context of their offence must

16 For further elaboration on the idea of the re-legitimating of prisons see Pratt (1997) and Sparks (1994).

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 PRISONS THAT EMPOWER

be acknowledged. It is this aspect of feminist notions of empowerment that corresponds

with the agenda of Corrections Canada, which clearly constructs the offender as
accountable and responsible for her actions irrespective of victimization and structural
impediments. The difference is that the Correctional Service of Canada sees empower-
ment as linked to responsibility not relations of power.
Corrections, by virtue of their legal role and responsibility in the criminal justice
process, seeks to make the offender accountable and responsible for their criminal
behaviours, irrespective of structural or situational limitations. It is this process that
Corrections Canada terms empowerment. This individualistic approach contradicts
feminist approaches, which place the woman’s actions into a wider social, political, and
economic context. Despite the rise of ‘empowerment discourse’ woman-centred correc-
tions is not empowerment as defined by those who wrote Creating Choices. This primary
emphasis on responsibility de-contextualizes feminist/Aboriginal constructions of
women’s oppression and it disregards feminist/ Aboriginal analyses of the social,
economic, political barriers experienced by women, and in particular by marginalized
women. The new strategy of empowerment softens but still reinforces disciplinary power.
These examples show how empowerment strategies can be aligned with different
political rationalities. The following section further explores how this ‘will to empower’
involves both coercive and voluntary exercises of power over the subjectivity of the
empowered (Cruikshank 1994: 35).

The Unempowerable Prisoner: The Triangle of Sovereignty-Discipline-Government

Simon (1994: 17) in his analysis risk management and the government of campus life
argues that ‘a shift in the acceptance of particular political rationalities may undermine
the stability of a government, requiring efforts at redefinition and reform’. This claim is
relevant to the problem of ‘empowering penal government’ currently faced by the
Correctional Service of Canada. This dilemma consists of prisoners’ resistance and the
general failure of the new correctional regimes to adequately responsibilize ‘problem
prisoners’. Given that the ‘will to empower’ is more often that not imposed on a captive
audience of prisoners, by a sometimes well-intentioned state armed with a body of
knowledge about what is best for the prisoner, resistance is not surprising. Current events
and recent changes in government policy are examined to show how neo-liberal
strategies like empowerment develop alongside and operate in conjunction with
sovereignty and discipline.
The most significant long-term recommendation of the Task Force was the closure of
the Prison for Women, and the construction of four small regional facilities and one
Aboriginal ‘healing lodge’. Four new regional prisons and an Aboriginal healing lodge
are now operational.17 However, the Prison for Women also remains open. While the

17 Each regional facility was supposed to operate under a programme philosophy that approximates community norms, focuses on

the use of community services and expertise, and is geared to the safe and earliest possible release of federally sentenced women. The
primary programming includes health care, mental-health services, addiction programmes, family visiting, mother and child
programmes, spirituality and religion, Aboriginal programmes, education, and vocational training (TFFSW 1990: 138–47). The
Aboriginal healing lodge would allow federally sentenced Aboriginal women to serve all or part of their sentences in a ‘culturally
sensitive’ environment. This facility would address the needs of federally sentenced Aboriginal women through Native teachings,
ceremonies, contact with elders and children and interaction with nature (TFFSW 1990: 147–50).

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majority of the federally sentenced women were transferred to the new prisons, a few
women (fewer than 15) remain at the infamous Prison for Women. According to the
Correctional Service of Canada, these women are high risk/high need and therefore not
suitable for the new empowering prisons. Recent incidents at the Prison for Women in
April 1994, at NOVA and at Edmonton, two of the new regional prisons (involving
incidents of self-injury, suicide attempts, escapes, a prisoner’s death, and assaults on
staff), and the government’s reaction to these incidents, further shows how the contem-
porary rhetoric of empowerment can disguise and conceal ongoing repressive (and
sometimes abusive) penal practices.
These highly publicized and scrutinized events contribute to another shift in govern-
mental logic. Where government-at-a-distance fails, techniques of disciplinary
governance are reasserted and legitimated through administrative discourses of risk18
and public safety. In adapting to some recent failures, Corrections Canada has reformu-
lated some of its administrative objectives and priorities. It has developed new
managerial techniques and rationales for the ‘resistant prisoner’. The objective of
accommodating and responding to the unique needs and experiences of women
prisoners is outlined as secondary to the protection of the public from ‘dangerous
criminals’.
Corrections Canada’s redefinition of some prisoners as ‘difficult to manage’ and
‘unempowerable’, requires the deployment of what Garland (1996: 46) called a
criminology of the other, which ‘represents criminals as dangerous members of distinct
racial and social groups that bear little resemblance to us’. Furthermore, ‘it is a
criminology that trades in images, archetypes, and anxieties, rather than in careful
analysis and research findings’ (Garland 1996: 461). Recent correctional policies and
narratives of the ‘unempowerable’ (high risk and high need) offender demonize and
pathologize women who resist well-intentioned, empowering correctional interventions.
These women (who are mainly Aboriginal or mentally ill) are ultimately portrayed as
risky and as a danger to the prison culture, the public and to themselves. They are
constructed as needing more intensive and ultimately more punitive supervision to
ensure public safety.
Contrary to past pronouncements on the empowerment of all women prisoners,
representatives of the Correctional Service of Canada now claim that:
There is a small group of highly disruptive women who have extensive experience in either or both the
mental health and the provincial correctional system. Many of these women are high risk to themselves
and others and are also in need of intervention (high need). Their behaviour increases the risk for the
internal security of the institution and for their escape from the institution. It has been determined that the
community-type design of the new regional facilities and the accompanying concept of empowerment and personal
responsibility envisioned by the Task Force does not adequately meet their needs, either in terms of security or
programming. (emphasis added; Reynolds 1996: 7)

The construction of this group of women as ‘disruptive’, ‘risky’ and ‘potential escapees’
is used to justify use of force, involuntary transfers, searches, prolonged segregation in

18 For a more detailed analysis of how prisoners are increasingly governed through risk-based actuarial technologies see Hannah-

Moffat (1999) and Feeley and Simon (1992, 1994).

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solitary confinement, and the transfer of some women to segregated units in men’s
maximum security penitentiaries.
The plans for the more ‘disruptive’ prisoners reveal, in its starkest form, the persis-
tence of sovereign and disciplinary powers. The preferred strategy for the management
of these ‘difficult prisoners’ consisted, in the mid to late 90s, of the construction of
separate, segregated women’s units in existing men’s facilities (most notably in Kingston
Penitentiary where women were originally housed in the eighteenth century). While this
strategy was averted by legal challenges about its constitutionality, each of the new
facilities has constructed a ‘secure unit’ and an ‘intensive healing programme’ to
accommodate difficult to manage prisoners (Whitehall 1995). Several federally
sentenced women are currently housed in segregated units of men’s maximum security
penitentiaries (including Saskatchewan penitentiary; Saint-Annes-des-Plaines, Quebec;
Springhill, Nova Scotia). Further, the provocative image of the ‘risky violent woman’,
who is not amenable to benevolent, empowering regimes is used by the government to
legitimate the continued operation of the Prison for Women and to expand static
security measures at all of the new prisons.
The total number of ‘enhanced security’ cells in the new prisons has doubled from the
number in the original design of the regional facilities. The enhanced unit is to be used
for both high need and high risk women.

The enhanced unit is contained within the main building; it is a closed unit and has its own enclosed
exercise yard. The unit consists of four cells and program areas, with two levels of supervision
(Segregation—23-hour restriction; or Maximum with access to program participation). The unit has
24-hour supervision by staff. It provides housing for inmates who exhibit violent behaviour and/or have special
needs, and/or serve disciplinary sentences. (emphasis added; Whitehall 1995: 22)

From this description, there is no difference in the management of women who are
considered high risk due to violence and women who are high need because of ‘mental
health’ problems.19 Both groups are viewed as poor candidates for empowerment as
envisioned by the 1990 Task Force on Federally Sentenced Women. Not only does this
description fail to support the Task Force’s previously outlined general principle of
empowerment, but it also indicates a return to a more repressive logic of punishment.
All of the new prisons have made changes to accommodate ‘problem prisoners’.
Recent correctional practices suggest that an increasing number of women are being
classified by institutional staff as risky, despite the fact that four years ago many of the
same women were believed to present more of a risk to themselves than to anyone else
(TFFSW 1990: 41–2, 89–91). None of the new security developments discussed are
perceived by Corrections Canada as being in contradiction with its wider philosophy
of empowerment, because this group of prisoners is not seen as amenable to the
principles outlined by the Task Force. In fact, the Correctional Service of Canada
now claims that one of the lessons learned during the operationalization of Creating
Choices is that ‘one size does not fit all’ and that ‘although most women will very much
benefit from the cottage-style housing, with day to day routine that emphasizes life—
cooking, meal planning, problem solving, and so on, this is not the answer for

19 At the time of going to press the Correctional Service of Canada had developed a more detailed and comprehensive intervention

strategy for managing these populations.

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 HANNAH-MOFFAT

some’(Reynolds 1996: 8). Subsequently, the difficult offenders who are either resistant
to or identified as resistant to this kinder, gentler form of punishment are subject to a
different type of punishment.
The vulnerability and resistance of a newly marginalized group of unempowerable
prisoners illustrates the triangular interdependence of sovereignty, discipline and
government in penality. Prisons are governed by cultural sensibilities and mentalities
that limit the extent to which the content of a regime can be changed. With respect to the
woman-centred prison it is increasingly unclear as to who is being empowered––the
Prison or the Prisoner? However, what is clear is that the state can now claim it offers
women programmes and services that provide them the opportunity of empowerment.
The punitive treatment of ‘irresponsible’ prisoners is not inconsistent with wider neo-
liberal strategies of responsibilizing. It becomes more difficult for advocates and
reformers to show how the state is negligent, in terms of its recognition of the
programming needs of women.

Conclusions
This article has only begun the task of unravelling some of the colonizations, resistances,
and complexities of new strategies of penal governing and their tenuous and complex
relation with sovereignty and discipline. Corrections Canada has adopted new
responsibilizing strategies of government that exist in a triangular relationship with
discipline and sovereignty. Additional research is needed to further understand and
reveal the particularities of these relations. This discussion of empowerment as
responsibilizing reform strategy demonstrates three points. First, that new forms of
governing are flexible and resonate with multiple and contradictory goals. Secondly,
each new strategy of governing differentially mobilizes and creates a series of knowledges
to justify and legitimate various interpretations and uses of these strategies. And finally,
the creation of the unempowerable prisoner reveals that in situations where forms of
responsibilizing government-at-a-distance fail, there is often a resort to more sovereign
or disciplinary exercises of power. Thus, illustrating the coexistence and interdepen-
dence of multiple forms of power (sovereign, disciplinary and governmental).
The Task Force’s principles of shared responsibility and empowerment contributed to
the production of a unique reform initiative. These ideals, however, were not neatly
translated or implemented in practice. Even though the government continues regularly
to consult with and inform the community of their progress, it rarely works in
partnership with the community. Several community stakeholders and prisoners feel
alienated and devalued partly because of their marginal involvement with this new
regime. In spite of this alienation, the knowledges and resources of organizations like the
Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies and Aboriginal groups are selectively
used to legitimate penal strategies and to supplement deficiencies and gaps apparent in
governmental programmes. Rarely are these groups equitably compensated for their
contributions to this ‘neo-liberal partnership’.
The use of a versatile and multifaceted strategy of empowerment and shared responsi-
bility have shifted the relationship between the governors and the governed. The
language of empowerment was originally located in more radical, critical and competing
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 PRISONS THAT EMPOWER

spaces commonly associated with feminism and Aboriginal traditions, not with
punishment. The recent integration and redefinition of the language used in these
peripheral and critical spaces into correctional discourse represents an important shift
in the public presentation and corporate definition of punishment in modern society. It
is evident that a new array of neo-liberal strategies and rationalities are being employed
in the governance of female prison populations. Strategies like empowerment now have
a disturbing flexible and non-conflictual quality. One reason why an empowerment
strategy can be incorporated by the state is because it does not represent a significant
challenge to existing relations of power, in fact it re-enforces them.

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