state:
Massachusetts
Local history:
Reforming Gender and the Carceral State
What are women’s prisons for?
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Exhibiting Partner:
Forbes Library and Historic Northhampton
Forbes Library: 20 West Street | Historic Northampton: 46 Bridge Street
March 1, 2017March 30, 2017

States of Incarceration is now at the Levine Museum in Charlotte, NC

States of Incarceration is extended in NC! September 23, 2023 - January 31, 2023 at the Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte, NC!

401 S Tryon St, Charlotte, NC 28202

go to www.museumofthenewsouth.org for more information.

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Massachusetts: Reforming Gender and the Carceral State
What are women’s prisons for?
University of Massachusetts Amherst

The Framingham Reformatory Prison for Women, founded in 1877, catalyzed women’s carceral reform. Nineteenth-century reformers advocated for separate prisons to address women’s needs, but by criminalizing certain behaviors and promoting others through domestic skills-based programming and a strong culture of surveillance, women’s prisons became powerful enforcers of white, middle-class norms of gender and sexuality.

Built in 2007 and expanded in 2012, Western Massachusetts Regional Women’s Correctional Center, the state’s newest jail for women, was similarly justified as necessary to meeting women’s “distinct needs". While officials champion the jail as “gender responsive,” activists reject this notion. Women have been shackled during childbirth, denied proper prenatal nutrition, videotaped during strip searches, and many lose custody of their children. As a result of the Drug War, mandatory minimum sentences, and the decimation of the social safety net—and compounded by racism, sexism, and economic injustice—women are the fastest-growing incarcerated population in the United States.

Our Point of View

A group of women from different nations, ethnicities, and disciplines, we grapple with the intersection of gender and incarceration through the lens of two women’s prisons. Centering on women’s voices, we worked with local activists including the Statewide Harm Reduction Coalition to understand the complex ways that mass incarceration affects women in general and women of color in particular. Along with written sources and oral histories, conversations with local reproductive justice activists deeply informed our approach.

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Massachusetts: Reforming Gender and the Carceral State    University of Massachusetts Amherst
What are women’s prisons for?
Massachusetts: Reforming Gender and the Carceral State
What are women’s prisons for?
  University of Massachusetts Amherst

National Exhibition Venue    Forbes Library and Historic Northhampton

Public Dialogues and Events
| March 1 – March 30, 2017

See Full Exhibition & Events Schedule
“American prisons are a business. The most disadvantaged people in the country are its enslaved workers. Our communities pay the price. ”  — Holyoke Resident
“This exhibit helps to conceptualize the scale and scope of the injustice and suffereing perpetuated on citizens by the carceral state. ”  — Michael B.

Events:

Date: 
Friday, March 3, 2017

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