Responsibilisation and female imprisonment in contemporary penal policy: ‘Respect Modules’ (‘Módulos de Respeto’) in Spain
| Author | Ana Ballesteros-Pena |
| DOI | 10.1177/1462474517710241 |
| Date | 01 October 2018 |
| Published date | 01 October 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Punishment & Society
2018, Vol. 20(4) 458–476
! The Author(s) 2017
Responsibilisation and
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female imprisonment
DOI: 10.1177/1462474517710241
journals.sagepub.com/home/pun
in contemporary penal
policy: ‘Respect Modules’
(‘Mo´dulos de Respeto’)
in Spain
Ana Ballesteros-Pena
University of Barcelona, Spain
Abstract
In order to advance the study of female penal enforcement in the 21st century, this
article examines how new strategies of neoliberal penal governance, introduced over
the past decade in Spain, take shape in everyday practices and dynamics of prison life, as
well as examining intersections with traditional forms of punishment and discipline.
More specifically, this study addresses the case of Respect Modules (‘Mo´dulos de
Respeto’) in women’s facilities, and the article reveals that the implementation of prac-
tices of classification and responsibilisation reinforces traditional features of female penal
enforcement in the Spanish penal system such as discipline, control and obedience.
These technologies of the self are built on gender, race and nationality stereotypes.
The article demonstrates how the current evolution of the penal system leads to an
increasingly severe discipline and to a persistent inadequate attention paid to incarcer-
ated women’s needs. Finally, the methodology of the research was qualitative, consisting
of non-participatory direct observation in three prisons and interviews with
incarcerated women, technical and management teams, political authorities and
former authorities of the prison system.
Keywords
female punishment, gender, neoliberal penality, prisons, responsibilisation, Spain
Corresponding author:
Ana Ballesteros-Pena, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
Email: a.ballesterospena@gmail.com
Ballesteros-Pena
459
Introduction
The Foucauldian concept of governmentality has permitted and encouraged the
development of an extensive scholarship literature (Bosworth, 2007; Garland, 1996,
1997; Hannah-Moffat, 2000, 2001; O’Malley, 1999; Rose, 1993, 1996, 2000) which
explores ‘contemporary practices, revealing the ways in which their modes of exer-
cising power depend upon specific ways of thinking (rationalities) and specific ways
of acting (technologies), as well as upon specific ways of ‘‘subjectifying’’ individuals
and governing populations’ (Garland, 1997: 174).
In reference to practices, these authors explore technologies of the self as the
actions and strategies implemented in order to shape the individual and collective
capacities of action in ways that are consistent with the objectives pursued by
government in the neoliberal era (Garland, 1997; O’Malley, 1999; Rose, 2000).
These mechanisms of self-government are implemented upon a wide variety of
actors configuring what is known as responsibilisation process (Garland, 1997;
O’Malley, 1999; Rose, 2000). In this line of research, treatment is identified and
analysed as a form of responsibilising governance, thus producing a rational sub-
ject, self-governed, free and self-sufficient (Bosworth, 2007; Garland, 1997,
Hannah-Moffat, 2000; O’Malley, 1999; Rose, 2000).
Furthermore, feminist scholars have used these analytical tools in the analysis of
different components of the penal government. In doing so, research has shown the
gendered and racialised logics underpinning institutional discourses, practices and
penal powers. This body of research has focused on an increasing variety of insti-
tutions and programmes: women’s penal institutions (Hannah-Moffat, 2000, 2001;
McCorkel, 2003, 2004; Pollack, 2005, 2010), services for girls in the juvenile justice
system (Goodkind, 2005, 2009), drug treatment programmes (McKim, 2008, 2014),
institutional facilities for incarcerated mothers (Haney, 2010a) and parole and
probation systems (Turnbull and Hannah-Moffat, 2009; Wyse, 2013). In most
cases, researchers closely examine on women’s centred initiatives or gender-specific
programmes in which an ideal of ‘empowerment’ is constantly present. Drawing on
evidence from research in a state prison for women focused on the implementation
of gender-neutral programmes and policies, far from showing that women’s prisons
are no longer operating as ‘gender organisations’, McCorkel (2003: 73) demon-
strates that the
gendered character of punishment results in a distinct system of social control within
women’s prisons that merges key features of punishment (in the form of surveillance)
and therapy (in the form of diagnosis) to advance institutional claims about the
deviant self and to engineer a shift in behavior. Notably, what is being inserted into
the minds of inmates are not only institutional norms guiding conduct and behavior
but institutional claims about gender and subjectivity.
Additionally, the analysis of responsibilisation technologies has also pointed out
that new discourses, logics and practices intersect with other forms of action,
balance of power and rationalities within a particular conjuncture (Garland,
460
Punishment & Society 20(4)
1997: 188; O’Malley, 1999: 176). In spite of a historical progression (Garland, 1997:
188), the image is more complex, incomplete, fragmentary and contradictory, with
the simultaneous presence of old themes, new elements, shifts in roles and practices,
which demonstrate that changes in contemporary penality cannot be viewed in
isolation from past strategies (Hannah-Moffat, 2000: 510, 2001).
In Spain, due to some historical facts that have clearly affected the political and
penal development in 20th century, mainly the extraordinary length of the
Dictatorship of General Franco and the ‘relatively’ short democratic period after
that, this line of research has been underdeveloped so far. However, recent changes
in the penal policy, some of them focused on incarcerated women, represent a
starting point to analyse how strategies of neoliberal penal governance materialise
in the penitentiary system.
In doing so, this article examines how technologies of the self take shape in
everyday practices and dynamics of prison life, and how they intersect with trad-
itional forms of punishment and discipline. More specifically, addressing the case
of Respect Modules (‘Mo´dulos de Respeto’) – hereinafter, RMs – in women’s
facilities, the article argues that the implementation of practices of classification
and responsibilisation reinforces traditional features of female treatment such as
discipline, control and obedience, whilst also resting on gender, race and nation-
ality stereotypes. Furthermore, by the encouragement of gender-neutral pro-
grammes, the penal system leads to an increasingly severe discipline and to
inadequate attention of incarcerated women’s needs.
A brief historical background of the Spanish penal system
The extraordinary length of the recent dictatorial period (from 1936 to 1975–1977),
along with a political transition lead by the dictatorial elites, contributes to identify
the Spanish polity as a model of late democratisation (Brandariz-Garcı´a, 2016).
This characterisation has produced remarkable consequences in the whole political
system and has also impacted the penal system (Almeda, 2005; Brandariz-Garcı´a,
2016). The Spanish penal system has also been affected by the historical tardiness in
the development of the welfare state (Almeda, 2005).
The penal history of the first third of the 20th century shows that the ideal of
social rehabilitation had never been implemented, due to, among others reasons,
material and human deficiencies (Gargallo and Oliver, 2013). After 1936,
Franco’s dictatorship promoted a model of rehabilitation based on obedience,
discipline and personal reform – also in the ideological meaning characteristic of
dictatorial systems. This model was organised through work, the power of mili-
tary forces and the role of religion, exclusively represented by the Catholic
Church (Gargallo and Oliver, 2013). The predominance of religious orders is
constant in the prison history of Spain since the Ancient Regime. And this is
seen perhaps most clearly in the case of women (Almeda, 2002, 2005;
Herna´ndez, 2013). Although in the 1960s penitentiary policy was influenced
by ideas of scientific treatment implemented in European countries since the
Ballesteros-Pena
461
end of Second World War, again this practice was not performed in Spain.
Moreover, over the whole dictatorial period, prison conditions remained ‘par-
ticularly dire’ (Go´mez and Lorenzo, 2013).
After the end of the dictatorship, and in spite of the fact that the first democratic
law passed was one that referred to prisons, the modern democratic penitentiary
policy has inherited some inertia from the aforementioned extensive authoritarian
period. Although the rehabilitation prison model is included in the law (1979 Act),
research in the field has shown that it was not implemented in the following decades
(Go´mez and Lorenzo, 2013). The main features of the evolution of the penal system
in Spain may lead to its characterisation as a penal post-dictatorial model, more
severe and punishment-focused (Brandariz-Garcı´a, 2016).
In the specific case of female incarceration in the democratic period, Almeda
(2005: 195) summarises the situation as follows:
In women’s prisons, there is a precarious allocation of funds, inadequate spaces
often designed for the needs of male prisoners, inappropriate facilities, few
rehabilitative programmes and prison officers who are ill prepared to deal with the
needs of women. The penal treatment is based on...
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