The Bangkok Rules

Treating every prisoner as if they had the same male body does not establish equality. The Bangkok Rules, adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 21, 2010, concern women prisoners and noncustodial measures for women offenders. The Bangkok Rules bring health, violence, care and family relationships into institutional responsibilities rather than exceptional personal requests.

Punishment must not acquire additional bodily sites

The rules address dignity in searches and alternative methods. They prohibit disciplinary restrictions on family contact and restraints during labor, birth and immediately afterward. Requirements for nutrition, healthcare and conditions during pregnancy and breastfeeding are basic treatment, rather than rewards for compliant prisoners. Identical procedures can produce unequal bodily harm.

Children’s interests and specific safety conditions matter in family contact. Motherhood should not become a test of deservingness. Not every woman has children, and not every family relationship is safe; attention to care must not exclude childless women or different family forms.

Improving treatment and reducing confinement

Rule 64 gives preference to noncustodial sentences for pregnant women and women with dependent children where possible and appropriate, while retaining considerations concerning serious or violent offenses and continuing danger. This is not a guarantee of release. It does make confinement’s status as the default response available for questioning.

Abolition. Feminism. Now. brings minimum standards into conversation with a longer-term challenge to imprisonment. Transformative justice research examines other practices of responsibility for harm. Making confinement more humane should not justify expanding it. Conversely, criticizing prisons cannot require people currently imprisoned to wait for immediate protection until a larger transformation is achieved.