Events

The Gender and the Law Cluster at Warwick Law School would like to invite you to our upcoming work-in-progress presentations. We have four wonderful sessions scheduled, each designed to provide constructive feedback on ongoing research. If you would like to join any of the presentations, please register your interest hereLink opens in a new window, and we will share further details upon registration.

Nousheen Ritu, on 'Shadow Incarceration': Women's Experiences of Pretrial Detention in Bangladesh

Abstract: My PhD project delves into women's experiences of pretrial detention for drug trafficking related offenses in Bangladesh. I conducted a two-month prison ethnography in Kashimpur Female Central Jail, the country's only dedicated prison for women. Adopting a decolonial and feminist lens, I engage in creative methods such as artwork sessions with detainees, ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews with 32 detainees. My research findings explore women's embodied, subjective and emotional experiences of incarceration. In addition, I investigate women's exercise of agency and resistance within these punitive spaces, contributing to broader understandings of gendered punishment and punitive governance. I argue that pretrial detention, although deemed as a procedural measure, inflicts pain and penality on women detainees in prison. This challenges dominant logics of punishment that has often been confined within Eurocentric and androcentric boundaries of knowledge.