Women Exiting Prison: Critical Essays on Gender, Post-release Support and Survival B.Carlton and M.Segrave (Eds.). Abingdon: Routledge (2013) 212pp. £90.00hb ISBN 978-0-415-63076-4

Pat Carlen opens this incisive and inspiring volume with the stark reality that ‘[e]very day, millions of women around the world leave prisons fearful of what the future will bring’ (p.xiii). For some, there will be no future – in Victoria, Australia, for example, a disproportionately high number of women die after release from prison. Understanding why these deaths occurred, and how the lives and experiences of these women might differ from those of women who are released from prison and survive – and even thrive – is central to the origins of this edited collection. The authors of each chapter challenge us to ask critical, macro-level questions about the various harms of the ‘post-release and reintegration industries’ that have risen up in recent decades, and the socio-political context within which they have been created and implemented. Of particular concern is the rise of ‘gender responsive’ policies and programming. These services aim to deliver ‘women-centred’ criminal justice services, based on the understanding that women's crimes are ‘embedded within the conditions of their lives’. The editors are censorious, however, of the ability of such universal frameworks – however well-intentioned they may be – to effectively engage with the diverse range of experiences, needs, and backgrounds of criminalised women across the globe. Further, they argue that the ‘entrenching’ of this ‘gendered reform’ of the criminal justice system has, in fact, served to increase – rather than reduce – the multiple and complex layers of control to which criminalised women are already subject in ‘support[ing] the expansion and consolidation of new forms of gendered governance’ in prison and the community (pp.3–4). Again, Segrave and Carlton (p.4) point to the growth of the ‘reintegration industries’ as problematic, highlighting the ‘limits of reform’ in addressing the socio-structural and economic factors which are central to women's experiences of criminalisation. These concerns are brought to bear across a collection of critical essays which draw attention to the heterogeneity of women in the justice system (notwithstanding the often-similar narratives underpinning their pathways to prosecution and/or imprisonment), as well as problematising what it means to be a ‘woman’ and considering the consequences of the continued dichotomisation of ‘gender’ within criminal justice policies and practices – an exceptional and welcome consideration. In the introduction to the volume, Segrave and Carlton identify multiple ways in which focusing on ‘gender responsivity’ (GR) alone is problematic, given the systemic marginalisation which shapes the trajectories of criminalisation experienced by women who end up in our prisons (and are, thereafter, subject to such ‘gender responsive’ programmes). In Women Exiting Prison, GR initiatives are called to account through critical analyses of empirical studies in criminal justice systems across the western hemisphere and oceanic region. These offer direct insight into the post-release realities of women leaving prison in Australia, Canada, Northern Ireland, and England and Wales. In addition to the experiences of women exiting prison, there is welcome consideration of insights from practitioners and organisations working with them. Such views are often overlooked, and yet they can help to construct a more holistic awareness than can be achieved through one set of perspectives alone. With a particularly important focus on the experiences of Indigenous Australian women released from prison, Eileen Baldry also offers a reminder that ‘women exiting prison’ are by no means a homogenous group, drawing attention to intersections between gender, race, and culture within the post-release landscape. Together, these chapters act to highlight the complex levels and multiple layers of disadvantage, abuse, and marginalisation which frequently characterise the lives of women (both within and without criminal justice systems). In addition to these empirically-derived chapters, Women Exiting Prison also includes two penetrating theoretical chapters which draw attention to the broader socio-political and economic contexts that ‘drive injustice’, identified by Segrave and Carlton as the ‘connections between neo-liberalism, labour markets, social welfare policies and the ever-burgeoning carceral state’ (p.2). Within the context of the United States, Kristen Bumiller interrogates the links between gender, incarceration, the welfare state, and the labour market, re-narrating the growth of post-prison ‘re-entry’ projects as evidence of expanding – rather than decreasing – State mechanisms of penal control used against women. She problematises the concept of ‘re’-entry by arguing that most women (and men) leaving prison have most likely ‘never been integrated into mainstream society’ in the first instance – this fact underpins Bumiller's call for a ‘more realistic perspective on the structural challenges facing ex-prisoners’ – one which recognises, for example, difficulties in securing healthcare, housing, and employment (p.14). Continuing to focus on the intersections of disadvantage and discrimination within the lives of criminalised women, Cassandra Shaylor and Erica Meiners (ch. 9) begin with the tale of Dorothy – a 44-year-old African American woman, ‘who drank her first beer at 11 and was addicted to cocaine’ – and her seemingly-impossible post-release quest for meaningful employment. Set within the context of the United States, Shaylor and Meiners use this story as a vehicle for muddying the waters of criminological work which fails to engage with the ‘day-to-day realities’ of women like Dorothy, in their struggle to survive following release from prison. Such realities, Shaylor and Meiners (p.182) argue, cannot be detached from macro-level concerns such as the nation's ‘addiction to incarceration’, and the ways in which this phenomenon is ‘intimately linked to the country's history of slavery, colonialism, capitalism, and gender repression’. In concluding their chapter, Shaylor and Meiners observe that: ‘punishment does not end when one's time is done …; [indeed] the gendered landscape of post-prison life continues to constrain and punish even after release’ (p.182). In closing, Carlton and Segrave argue that if we are to effectually resist and push back against this phenomenon, then we must move beyond academic work which merely recognises the limitations of our current system, and move towards that which is focused on possibilities for achieving ‘genuine change for women caught in cycles of serial imprisonment and institutionalisation’(p.200). This perceptive and thought-provoking volume offers important critical commentary on existing scholarship on women's post-prison realities, support, and survival. It also represents a particularly timely read for UK scholars, practitioners, and policy makers looking to forge a more critical way forward in relation to women exiting prison and the recently-implemented Transforming Rehabilitation agenda (for example, see Annison, Brayford and Deering (2015) on this).

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