Impartiality or Individualization? Imprisoned Women’s Discourses of (In)Justice

Abstract

Using in-depth interviews with forty women in one California prison, the research addresses incarcerated women’s perceptions of justice regarding their experiences with the criminal justice system, particularly concerning the internal prison grievance system. This article focuses on interview subjects’ perceptions of (in)justice regarding problems relevant to the grievance processes. The most prominent discourses of justice revolved around procedural and substantive justice issues in seemingly contradictory ways. These discourses emerged from three main areas of discussion: everyday prison operations and interactions; the design and operation of grievance procedures; and dehumanizing prison processes and policies and sexual assaults and abuse. The article highlights the seemingly contradictory nature of the justice ideals put forth, discusses the contextual nature of these perceptions and, reflecting on justice and legal theory, offers some conclusions and recommendations, addressing the Prison Litigation Reform Act.

Keywords:

• Grievance
• impartiality
• incarcerated women
• individualization
• procedural justice

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My deepest appreciation goes to the incarcerated women who shared their stories with me. I would also like to thank Professors Kitty Calavita, Valerie Jenness, Carroll Seron, Sora Han, and Belinda Robnett-Olsen for their research advice and mentorship; the University of California, Irvine for support to complete this research; and my colleague Gwenola Ricordeau and my former student Logan McAndrews for editing suggestions.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In Tyler’s 1988 study, distributive justice was operationalized as outcome favorability and, in his 1994 study, it was operationalized as the fairness of the outcome and consistency of rules for handling similar problems. Similarly, differentiations were made between process control and decision control in earlier studies (Tyler et al., 1985; Lind et al., 1983), and process and decision control were combined as a procedural measure in Tyler’s 1994 study. See Johnson et al. (2014) for more sophisticated methodological critiques of scholars’ different conceptualizations and operationalizations of legitimacy and procedural and distributive justice.

2 In 2009, the prison housed nearly 2,600 women; overrepresentation of some offender characteristics may not be unusual given this offender population and a respondent sample size of 40.

3 OBIS (Offender Based Information Systems) data use ethnic/race categories White, Hispanic/Latina, Black, Mexican and Other; CDCR (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation) intake data categorizes prisoners as White, Hispanic/Latina, Black, and Other; Mexicans are included in Hispanic/Latina counts.

4 Deeper discussions of the impact of race and gender issues on discrimination from data in this study are the topics of two working papers.

5 Low-level rule violations are fairly common in prisons and exchange relationships exist whereby correctional officers turn a blind eye to minor violations in exchange for compliance overall (see Stojkovic, 2003).

6 Women with a life sentence represented more of the sample population than the prison population, and so this finding may overstate grievance filing activity.

7 Many of these were granted at the informal level, and therefore would not be logged into the system, and would not become part of the official record on grievance adjudication. Of 54 grievances discussed, 16 were granted in full, four were partially granted, 14 were denied, 13 never received a response, and seven were still pending.

8 The archival sample of 100 grievance forms evidenced concern regarding retaliation as well; eleven of the forms specifically requested that there be no retaliation for filing the grievance.

9 In 1961, California adopted the California Civil Addict Program, which provided for the commitment and treatment of narcotics addicts whose crimes were attributed to their addiction (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, 2009). It is unclear why civil addicts are not given information regarding their rights and entitlements.

Additional information

Funding

The study underwent Institutional Review Board procedures through the University of California, Irvine and was approved via e-modification 8269 for HS# 2008-6651 and HS# 2007-5578.