Women and Justice: Keywords

Three female petitioners sued a state-managed prison facility after prison officials required them to verify that they were menstruating before bringing feminine hygiene products into a male prison when visiting inmates. One of the petitioners’ children was also forced to watch the mother being searched because prison rules require children be supervised at all times. The women cited violations of due process, invasion of privacy, negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, false imprisonment, unconstitutional seizures, unconstitutional search and a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. The court denied the prison’s motion to dismiss, noting that filing a case against an agent in his official capacity as well as the entity to which the individual agent is not legally precluded and that liability can rest on the individuals given that the actors at least knowingly acquiesced in the search and likely facilitated the policy that allowed it to happen.

This paper explores some of the ways in which violence against women relates to the imprisonment of women. It focuses on the role of gender-based violence as a pathway to and consequence of women’s incarceration, as these connections have generally received less attention than violence against women as a prison condition. The paper also considers how these pathways and consequences implicate states’ international law responsibility to eliminate violence against women and offer suggestions for how states might more effectively realize that obligation.