GENDER SECURITY

Gender Security

Gender Security

Introduction

The security rating assigned to a prison affects a range of structural and environmental features, such as the type of housing it offers and its inmate: staff ratio. Other conditions, including whether the institution has a mobile patrol and/or a gun tower, what type of perimeter barriers it has, and what its internal security and detection devices are like, also determine the security rating.

The security level of an inmate is usually based on his or her potential risk to the community. Other factors that are taken into account include an inmate's sentence length; security of the victim, witnesses, and the general public; and other judicial recommendations. The classification process starts once an offender has been convicted and sentenced by the courts and continues when the person arrives at a specific prison. Usually prisoners' security levels are reconsidered at regular intervals throughout their time behind bars. In the federal system, for example, the first reassessment of a person's classification level usually occurs around seven months after arrival in a facility. Reviews then occur on an annual basis. In these security reviews, many different factors are taken into account, including sentence length, escape attempts, history of violence, drug and alcohol abuse, mental or psychological stability, frequency and nature of disciplinary reports, a demonstration of financial responsibility (meaning the ability to pay fines, restitution, or family support), and family stability. Reevaluations may increase or decrease an inmate's security level and may sometimes cause an individual to be moved to a different establishment.

Women, Men, the Law, and Feminist Legal Theory

Legal theory that explains gendered differentiation has focused on the culture of gender, the biological constructs that gave rise to gender inequality, and the intersection of gender discrimination and male power and authority. Gender is a socially and culturally defined concept. Feminist legal scholarship aims to explain gendered relationships that harm women. It has evolved from a proposition that law should abolish all inequality to a proposition that gender equity must embrace differentiated views of women and men that accommodate gender similarities and differences. Some view equal treatment under the law as an abstract ideal, while gender equity provides the basis for pragmatic treatment that accommodates fundamental social and biological differences between men and women.

Liberal feminist legal theory that has evolved over the past thirty years focuses on specific areas of law, society, and culture where legal changes can alleviate women's subjugation. Gender-neutral laws can eliminate blatant gender inequalities or change practices that limit female participation in the social and political world. By infusing liberal theory (individualism) into feminist analysis (collective), Catharine MacKinnon observes that the law's current focus on gender neutrality means that gender does not matter. Liberal theorists view male and female subjugation as creating intolerable social and political limitations for both sexes. Some feminist legal theorists are currently analyzing the continued inequality in power that separates the sexes through cultural stereotypes that maintain the primary female role as caregiver and homemaker and the primary male role as provider ...