ABSTRACT
While convention requires women's prisons to look like minimum security institutions economic reality decrees that they cannot be minimum security... .The result is an atmosphere that in spite of attractive facilities and peaceful surroundings is really very tense and oppressive. The inmate...is reduced to a state of childish dependency. ...The reduction of women to a weak and dependent and helpless status is brought about by more subtle means than by the gun or the high wall (Gibson, 1973, quoted in Carlen, 1983: 21. Emphasis in original).
