British Journal of Criminology Advance Access originally published online on November 29, 2006
British Journal of Criminology 2007 47(3):405-422; doi:10.1093/bjc/azl090
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The British Journal of Criminology 47:405-422 (2007)
© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD). All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
Normalization and its Discontents
Constructing the Irreconcilable Female Political Prisoner in Northern Ireland
* School of Criminology, Education, Sociology and Social Work, Keele University, Staffordshire ST5 5BG, England, UK; M.Corcoran{at}crim.keele.ac.uk.
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This article accounts for the official construction of women political prisoners as the intractable and problematic subjects of political decarceration in Northern Ireland. The discussion firstly locates the processes of penal normalization in Northern Ireland in a hegemonic struggle which preceded the managerialist era usually associated with political decarceration. Secondly, it traces the emergence of ideal-typical sites of negotiation and contestation between women political prisoners and the authorities. Thirdly, it utilizes feminist critiques of contemporary penal governmentalities to identify the formation of politico-gendered penal controls, concluding with summary of the era's punitive excesses with respect to women prisoners.