Locked-In and Locked-Down Lives: Women’s Carceral Recollections of Quotidian and Pandemic Times

Prisons incarcerate individuals, undertrials or convicted, through a repressive disciplinary regime. Because of its permanent institutional nature, penal power is ‘normalised’ via a slew of rules, restrictions, and regulations. The assimilation of disciplinary and surveillance mechanisms within the quotidian lives of prisoners is the hallmark of routine penal power. Focusing on women prisoners who remain invisible within the prison population, this article explores women’s everyday life behind bars through testimonial accounts recorded/written by four ex-prisoners—B. Anuradha, Seema Azad, Sudha Bharadwaj, and Angela Sontakey. Beyond the quotidian, the article inspects the exceptional times when prison order breaks down. While it is known that prisoner protests are dealt with severely, the recent pandemic has presented newer forms of penal repression. To better understand the gamut of repressive penal practices, this article focuses on the issue of custodial care both in everyday times and during the pandemic. By examining the interface between locked-in and locked-down times through instances of routine health care and pandemic experiences, the article seeks to build a wider account of the impact of penal repression on women prisoners.