Dispositions that matter: Investigating criminalized women’s resettlement through their (trans)carceral habitus
| Author | Kaitlyn Quinn |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/17488958211017371 |
| Published date | 01 February 2023 |
| Date | 01 February 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/17488958211017371
Criminology & Criminal Justice
2023, Vol. 23(1) 20 –38
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/17488958211017371
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Dispositions that matter:
Investigating criminalized
women’s resettlement through
their (trans)carceral habitus
Kaitlyn Quinn
University of Toronto, Canada
Abstract
Whether prisoner resettlement is framed in terms of public health, safety, economic prudence,
recidivism, social justice, or humanitarianism, it is difficult to overstate its importance. This
article investigates women’s experiences exiting prison in Canada to deepen understandings of
post-carceral trajectories and their implications. It combines feminist work on transcarceration
and Bourdieusian theory with qualitative research undertaken in Canada to propose the (trans)
carceral habitus as a theoretical innovation. This research illuminates the continuity of criminalized
women’s marginalization before and beyond their imprisonment, the embodied nature of these
experiences, and the adaptive dispositions that they have demonstrated and depended on
throughout their lives. In doing so, this article extends criminological work on carceral habitus
which has rarely considered the experiences of women. Implications for resettlement are
discussed by tracing the impact of criminalized women’s (trans)carceral habitus (i.e. distrust,
skepticism, vigilance about their environments and relationships) on their willingness to access
support and services offered by resettlement organizations.
Keywords
Bourdieu, carceral habitus, criminalized women, embodiment, resettlement, transcarceration
Introduction
Whether prisoner resettlement is framed in terms of public health, safety, economic pru-
dence, recidivism, social justice, or humanitarianism, it is difficult to overstate its impor-
tance. In Canada, more than 75% of all prisoners will eventually navigate this
Corresponding author:
Kaitlyn Quinn, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, 725 Spadina Avenue, Toronto, ON M5S
2J4, Canada.
Email: kaitlyn.quinn@mail.utoronto.ca
1017371CRJ0010.1177/17488958211017371Criminology & Criminal JusticeQuinn
research-article2021
Article
Quinn 21
transition—for many, multiple times (Public Safety Canada, 2015). Intensifying calls to
decarcerate amid the COVID-19 pandemic (Theodore, 2020) poses an increasingly
urgent need for better understandings of how former prisoners experience resettlement.
This is particularly true for women, who have historically received less attention in
scholarship and policy discussions (Malloch and McIvor, 2011; Österman, 2018).
Accordingly, this article investigates the experiences of women exiting prison in Canada
to deepen understandings of women’s post-carceral trajectories and their implications.
Much of the existing research on resettlement and desistance has prioritized cognitive
explanations (e.g. Giordano et al., 2002; Maruna, 2001) to the detriment of understand-
ings of the embodied, habitual, and pre-conscious dimensions of exiting prison (Bosworth
and Kaufman, 2013; Chamberlen, 2017). By contrast, in this article, I center embodiment
in processes of resettlement in order to understand how punishment and its effects are
absorbed and actually experienced by individuals in bodies. To do so, I draw on and
extend the Bourdieusian concept of carceral habitus (e.g. Caputo-Levine, 2013; Page and
Goodman, 2018). In particular, I place existing accounts of carceral habitus, which gen-
eralize from the experiences of criminalized men, in dialogue with feminist understand-
ings of criminalized women’s marginalization as uniquely transcarceral, to offer the
concept of (trans)carceral habitus. Analytically, this adaptation emphasizes the fluid
entanglements of criminalized women’s marginalization within, beyond, and before
prison; the embodied nature of these experiences; and the creativity, adaptations, and
resilient dispositions criminalized women have demonstrated and depended on through-
out their lives.
Greater knowledge and understanding of the embodied dispositions associated with
criminalized women’s (trans)carceral habitus may also inform better resettlement sup-
port and service provision by assisting helping professionals anticipate the impact and
interpretation of their rehabilitative interventions (e.g. Walklate, 2011), including at the
pre-conscious level. Existing scholarship has illustrated how the post-prison dispositions
of criminalized men can create barriers for their resettlement (e.g. Caputo-Levine, 2013;
Martin, 2018). However, these outcomes have yet to be specified for women who face
distinct pathways into and out of crime (Harding et al., 2019; Western, 2018). My analy-
sis demonstrates how criminalized women’s formative experiences and transcarceral
marginalization may encourage particular (adaptive) dispositions that reduce (or, at the
very least, complicate) their ability and willingness to access resettlement services.
This article is structured as follows. I discuss recent scholarship on resettlement and
desistance, highlighting the need for embodied perspectives. I introduce the concept of
carceral habitus, placing it in dialogue with feminist criminological literature on tran-
scarceration to better account for the resettlement realities of criminalized women. I
define (trans)carceral habitus—this article’s theoretical contribution. I detail my data and
methods. Subsequent empirical sections illustrate how criminalized women’s embodied
dispositions throughout their resettlement connect to their (often) lifelong experiences of
marginalization, social isolation, and threats of violence informed by and intersecting
with their gender, race/ethnicity, and social class. Finally, I underscore the importance of
these findings for studies of resettlement, explain how this research might inform reha-
bilitative interventions undertaken with criminalized women, and highlight study limita-
tions and avenues for future research.
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