ABSTRACT
This chapter gives an account of women’s political imprisonment from the internment of women in 1972 up to the 1990s. The outline generally follows Gormally et al.’s (1993) functional chronology of prison administration in Northern Ireland which reflected successive shifts in counterterrorism policy (see also Gormally and McEvoy 1995; McEvoy 2001). Briefly, these are ‘reactive containment’ (1969-76) which was characterized by internment, special category status for those convicted through juryless courts, military security in the prisons and massive investment in the prison estate and staffing; ‘criminalization’ (1976-81) which followed the removal of special category status and the implementation of an extended range of powers to persuade or coerce prisoners into accepting criminal status; and ‘normalization’ (early 1980s onwards) or the period of reconstruction in the prisons between the aftermath of the 1981 hunger strike and the signing of the Belfast Agreement in 1998.
