blog 14

Penitentiaries have always been very masculine in nature. In the beginning, men and women were housed together. Women were seen as a nuisance. They were blamed for making men do immoral things in prison, such as masturbating and getting women inmates pregnant. While men were responsible for learning tasks that would make them productive members of society, women were responsible for sewing and mending male inmates and officers clothes. Male criminals were seen as “idle, vicious, and depraved” men and the penitentiary’s disciplinary techniques were comprised of correcting these issues and, thus, creating the model citizen. Women were supposed to be “idle,” so the woman criminal was said to go against the morality of women and were unable to be reformed. Reformists sought to have women housed separately from men. They created women’s reformatories. These women’s reformatories were organized by middle-class women who saw this as their social mission. They created places where women would learn domestic skills, such as housekeeping. Their training programs emphasized traditional women’s roles. These women’s institutions were to be run by female staff and officers. They were designed like the “cottage plan” and were meant for young, first time criminals. These reformatories are a lot like female corrections facilities today. In the beginning women were seen as annoyances. Ideas about masculinity and femininity shaped the men’s and women’s reformatory movements. The women’s reformatory movement was successful only in the view of reform for the “fallen” white, working-class woman, women of color and poor white women continued to be treated like male convicts. They were commonly housed with men on prison farms and also were leased out like men during the convict leasing times.