V. Gendering Risk at What Cost: Negotiations of Gender and Risk in Canadian Women’s Prisons

A major turning point in Canadian federal1 women’s corrections occurred nearly 14 years ago when the federal government accepted the report of The Taskforce on Federally Sentenced Women (TTFSW, 1990). This report mandated a new women-centered and culturally sensitive approach to the management and organization of federal women’s prisons. Yet many of the difficulties identified by the taskforce still exist (Hannah-Moffat and Shaw, 2001) and are subject to ongoing evaluation by state and non-state agencies, including the Auditor General (Auditor General of Canada, 2003) and the Canadian Human Rights Commission.2 A major concern for Canadian researchers is the potential for systemic discrimination resulting from gender-neutral risk assessment practices that ineffectually account for gender and cultural differences (see also Van Voorhis and Presser, 2001, for the USA context). Risk tools have an intuitive appeal to practitioners because they ground decisions in statistical (thus objective) relationships (Feeley and Simon, 1992). Strategically, such tools are used to inform service rationalization and to increase professionals’ accountability in decision making in the named efficient and just management of a range of risks (recidivism, suicide, self-harm, violence, escape). Whilst risk assessments may be considered by some practitioners (institutional classification officers, parole board members, probation officers and case managers) as a ‘matter of common sense’, such a discourse is not persuasive in court or at inquests, so a standardized risk assessment ensures a decision is defensible should something go wrong: ‘they back you up if something goes wrong – you can demonstrate that you used a standardized approach that is empirically based’.3