Locked in the Home: A Critique of House Arrest as an Alternative to Imprisonment for Women Sentenced for Drug-Related Crimes

• Date: 01 June 2021
• Author: Libardo José Ariza,María Mauersberger,Fernando León Tamayo Arboleda
• Published date: 01 June 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/00328855211010410
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/00328855211010410

The Prison Journal

2021, Vol. 101(3) 286 –305

© 2021 SAGE Publications

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DOI: 10.1177/00328855211010410

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Article

Locked in the Home:

A Critique of House

Arrest as an Alternative

to Imprisonment for

Women Sentenced for

Drug-Related Crimes

Libardo José Ariza1, María Mauersberger2,

and Fernando León Tamayo Arboleda3

Abstract

This article addresses the unintended consequences of using house arrest for

female offenders as an alternative to prison for drug-related crimes. We propose

that in patriarchal societies, locking women at home could imply moving them

to another control device that may be as harmful as prison. Thereby, house

arrest creates an unintended effect in which domestication in traditional gender

roles ends up being the primary target of female offender punishment.

Keywords

house arrest, female imprisonment, public policy, gender policies, prison

alternatives

Introduction

In the last few years, the research literature on the differential impact of crim-

inal persecution and imprisonment of women has grown significantly (Berry

1Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia

2Independent consultant in matters of Gender and Prison conditions, Colombia

3Universidad Autonoma Latinoamericana, Medellín, Colombia

Corresponding Author:

Libardo José Ariza, Universidad de los Andes, Carrera 1 No. 18a-12, Bogota 111711,

Colombia.

Email: lj.ariza20@uniandes.edu.co

1010410TPJXXX10.1177/00328855211010410The Prison JournalAriza et al.

research-article2021

Ariza et al. 287

et al., 2018; Carlen, 2002, 2006; Carlen & Worrall, 2004; Gelsthorpe &

Morris, 2002). The statistics on the impact of imprisonment on women when

drugs are involved have led to an important academic and political debate

regarding the possible public policy guidelines that should be directed to the

issue. In the regional and local realm, this concern has coincided significantly

with a transnational political agenda that seems to turn the politics of drug

criminalization toward a horizon of decreasing criminal response (Amador

et al., 2016; Giacomello, 2017; Uprimny et al., 2016).

The intersection of the criminalization of drug-related crimes and mass

incarceration has given way to a focus on policies for reducing incarcera-

tion (Parsons et al., 2015; Penal Reform International, 2012; United Nations

Office on Drugs and Crime, 2013). While there are political difficulties in

defending alternatives to incarceration—in a context dominated by grow-

ing penal populism and the expansion of imprisonment—there could be a

key opportunity to intersect with contemporary gender social movements

and the agenda of decriminalization of drug politics. These challenges are

especially strong in countries in which the war on drugs has shaped govern-

ment law and policy as well as the discourses of citizen security to a large

degree (Aponte Cardona, 2008; Iturralde, 2010, 2016; Ariza & Iturralde,

2017).

This article offers an analysis of recent tendencies of, on one hand,

addressing the disproportionate incarceration of women for drug-related

crimes and, on the other hand, highlighting the need to reduce and rationalize

imprisonment. The concurrence of these policy discussions has led to a sort

of consensus in regional criminal politics around proposing house arrest as a

solution for the incarceration of women linked with drug trafficking.

Nevertheless, we believe that despite the progressive nature of decarceration

efforts and searches for alternatives to prison, this proposal faces an impor-

tant challenge. The use of house arrest as an alternative to prison needs to

take into account the role fulfilled by the structure of homes in the historical

subordination of women in the Latin America case. By omitting the analysis

of the domestic space as a form of domination of women, these public policy

guidelines can, without proposing to do so, move incarcerated women from

one device of subordination and exclusion to another. When home arrest

meets prison, the techniques of control appear to “symbolize a continuity of

imprisonment outside the literal prison institution” (Allspach, 2010, p. 719).

Of course, while both the home and the prison maintain significant differ-

ences, they are two devices of social control that have contradictory political

effects for an agenda of female emancipation in the face of the disproportion-

ate weight of incarceration. In the Latin American context, the irreflexive use

of house arrest, as it is designed, can become a tool for structuring the