Women behind bars

Sivri, Gizem (2022): Women behind bars: penal policies and women offenders in the late Ottoman Empire (1840-1918). Dissertation, LMU München: Faculty of Cultural Studies

Abstract

This dissertation discusses the representation of female criminals in penal scripts, the place of women in the Ottoman prison reform agenda, and imprisonment practices for women inmates in the late Ottoman Empire. In the recurrent reforms of this era, the femininity of prisoners was central to the construction of special punitive practices and carceral sphere for the imprisonment of women. Along with the effects of fewer female inmates and special concentration on the influences of femininity on imprisonment, this dissertation has a thematic flow: ad hoc imprisonment areas, guardiancy and control methods, the epidemic crises, amnesty and release policies, tolerant and lenient imprisonment practices for pregnant and breastfeeding mothers, a varied criminal status of prostitutes in prisons, and feminine ways of penal labour in the prison workshops during the prison reformation process that took place between 1840 and 1918. This study mainly used Ottoman archival records to show a separate female carceral sphere that included and spilled outside of the prisons to encompass temporary leased locations and imams’ houses, dreadful living conditions of prisons, and guardiancy in female prisons within the analysis of prison reform interrupted by budgetary problems in the waning years of the Ottoman Empire. Prison officials emphasized the peculiarities and uniqueness of the situations of female prisoners, even if they had committed violent offences, such as homicide. Their being females also entailed their representation as more vulnerable, and as a result, more deserving of the state’s male-centric concern. As a result, state officials developed distinct treatments that they presented as more tolerant and “lenient,” especially for inmates who were also mothers. Young mothers were marked off, and the prison system developed original and idiosyncratic approaches for handling pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers. These punitive methods engendered the unique dynamics and prison policies for female inmates, while prostitutes were exposed to discrimination and stigmatization regarding their immoral acts. Although women suffered under woeful living conditions of dilapidated prisons amid ongoing prison reform, the prison policy shaped itself regarding female issues of prisoners as occasionally tolerant, discriminative, and ignorant depending on the context. Using archival cases, judicial records, penal scripts, and architectural plans, this dissertation sheds light on the impact of the multi-layered and gendered representations of female prisoners in the penal codes, prison regulations, reform attempts, bureaucratic interventions, and above all, imprisonment practices that were constructed by the reception of women’s criminal agency as dangerous criminals, vulnerable mothers, infirm, pregnant murderers, old women, prostitutes, penal laborers, pardoned and released women to show that these were effective on the punitive practices of the late Ottoman prison system.

• Item Type: Theses (Dissertation, LMU Munich)
• Keywords: Ottoman Empire, Women, Prisons, Law, Gender
• Subjects: 300 Social sciences; 300 Social sciences > 360 Social services, association; 900 History and geography; 900 History and geography > 940 General history of Europe; 900 History and geography > 950 General history of Asia, Far East
• Faculties: Faculty of Cultural Studies
• Language: English
• Date of oral examination: 27. January 2022
• 1. Referee: Neumann, Christoph
• Signature of the printed copy: 0001/UMC 30977