... female prisons themselves will also be looked at and sought to see if there are any major architectural differences. A major factor contributing to the way female corrections are shaped today is how the female offender and female criminality has been viewed in the past. Women offenders were traditionally seen "as more mad, than bad" and when they offended, they were perceived as being in need of care, protection and psychiatric help rather than punitive measures. (Wahidin 2004: 51). Where male criminals were feared as dangerous, women criminals tended to be regarded as misguided creatures that needed protection and help (Giallombardo 1966:7). Prison reformation for women was based on two main ideas of female offending. First, that the causes of women's criminality came from "an inherent pathological or biological weaknesses" and second "that women offenders had fundamentally deviated from their natural feminine roles" (Barton 2005:2). Reformation as such meant something ...

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