Homosexual relationships in women’s prisons: Deviation or deprivation?

Abstract

This paper intends to show current theoretical knowledge in the field of homosexual relations in womens’s prisons by reviewing the existing literature, and also by reviewing the situation in Serbia. The authors wanted to explain the complexity of the phenomenon, and also to answer the question of whether these relations are behaviors which result from deviations that is expected for the inmate population or just modes of adaptation to the conditions of prison life. Special attention was paid to gender socialization and the types of emotional and intimate relationships among female prisoners.

Keywords

• women’s prisons
• homosexual relations
• gender socialization
• female in mates
• Serbia