Chinese Culture and Its Influence on Prison Society: Women’s Experience

• Author: Ao Zhang
• Published date: 01 January 2021
• Date: 01 January 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0032885520978373
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0032885520978373

The Prison Journal

2021, Vol. 101(1) 3 –20

© 2020 SAGE Publications

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DOI: 10.1177/0032885520978373

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Article

Chinese Culture and

Its Influence on Prison

Society: Women’s

Experience

Ao Zhang1

Abstract

Based on interviews with 30 female parolees/ex-inmates and 10 prison

officers, this article argues that custody relationships among women

incarcerated in China are “not easy,” and this is due primarily to distrust

in prison society and a hierarchical prison culture. Even so, women inmates

are motivated to form and maintain harmonious relationships with others.

This article suggests that this behavior pattern is greatly influenced by the

Chinese culture of pragmatic Confucianism, which further explains the

women’s low interest in forming a prison subculture.

Keywords

Chinese women in prison, pragmatic Confucianism, harmonious relationships,

prison subculture

Introduction

Gender shapes women’s experience of incarceration, the manner in which

they are supervised, managed, and treated, and the means with which they

cope in prison society. In some early studies on women’s adjustment to

prison, scholars found that incarcerated women were more likely than men to

1Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, China

Corresponding Author:

Ao Zhang, School of Public Affairs & Law, Southwest Jiaotong University, Central Building

01207 Jiuli Campus, No. 111, Second Ring Road. N, Chengdu 61000, China.

Email: zhangaoowen@163.com

978373TPJXXX10.1177/0032885520978373The Prison JournalZhang

research-article2020

4 The Prison Journal 101(1)

be emotionally affected by the loss of friends and family and, thus, developed

same-sex relationships (Giallombardo, 1966; Ward & Kassebaum, 1965). In

attempting to resist the destructive effects of imprisonment, they created a

play family subculture, “a substitute universe within which the inmates may

preserve an identity relevant to life outside the prison” (Giallombardo, 1966,

p. 129). A play family involve female inmates “getting together and pretend-

ing to be mothers, sisters, wives, daughters, fathers, brothers, and sons”

(Mastrorilli, 2009, p. 50). It is an imitation of their family roles, a compli-

cated pattern of relationships which, Owen (1998) argues, derives from their

basic emotional, practical, and material connections and family ties. Research

indicates that men in prison seek gang memberships for protection, while

women inmates seek family membership for closeness and support (Pollock-

Byrne, 1990). Thus, women are more likely than men to participate in sup-

portive prison networks and less likely to have relationships “based on

coercive power structures” (Jiang & Winfree, 2006, p. 48).

Although studies of women prisoners in England, Scotland, and Sweden

show a different pattern in which same-sex relationships are much less preva-

lent compared to the US (see Dobash et al., 1986; Kruttschnitt & Gartner,

2003; Mandaraka-Sheppard, 1986), the play family phenomenon is still cur-

rent in several Western prisons today as a main coping strategy. Jones’s

(1993) research in a US Midwestern facility reported the finding that women

created a play family to adapt to prison culture, and, in a certain number of

circumstances, included same-sex coupling (see also Van Wormer, 2010). In

a more recent analysis, Levin (2012) discovered that incarcerated women at

a lower Manhattan correctional facility formed a community with fellow

prisoners, the connections with and support from which provided vital tools

in managing the challenges of imprisonment. They engage in a play family to

try to replicate the world they are missing outside of prison. Acting like moth-

ers or aunts reflects missing their children growing up or spending time with

an ill parent. For them, it is “meaningful to nurture young inmates” (Levin,

2012, p. 65).

While the play family adaptation is found in women’s prison subcultures

in the West, little is known about the experience of imprisonment and strate-

gies of coping of women inmates in the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

The so-called “state secret” (cited in Seymour & Anderson, 1998) became a

major obstacle for scholars, particularly Western academics, seeking to

undertake empirical research in Chinese prisons, given that women’s impris-

onment has long been marginalized and attracted little attention within the

Chinese academic community. Therefore, the current study’s significance

and value is listening to, for the first time, the “unheard” voices of women in

Chinese prisons—and in their own words, narratives, and stories of struggle.