1 PENAL REFORM, ANTI-CARCERAL FEMINIST CAMPAIGNS AND THE POLITICS OF CHANGE IN WOMEN’S PRISONS, VICTORIA AUSTRALIA Bree Carlton 1 Abstract: This paper emphasizes the importance of locating contemporary abolitionist social movements within a continuum of broader struggles against structural injustice. Previous decades have seen the re-emergence of women’s penal reform programmes framed as progressive solutions for alleviating the structural disadvantages and harms associated with imprisonment. Abolitionists have provided fierce critiques of the risks these pose in reinforcing the legitimacy and scale of imprisonment. However, we have yet to articulate a clear vision regarding the utility of reform in relation to decarceration strategies. In presenting a critical exploration of anti-carceral feminist campaign work in Victoria, Australia, this paper advocates the need to move beyond the simplistically conceived dualism of reform and abolition. The analysis explores how anti-carceral feminists have used reform as a resistance strategy within Victorian anti-discrimination campaigns in the 1980s and 1990s. Placed in historical context, these campaigns demonstrate the transformative possibilities and risks associated with the necessary navigation and pursuit of reformist strategies that is fundamental to a politics and practice of abolition. Keywords: reform; abolition; anti-carceral feminism, women and imprisonment INTRODUCTION Feminist critiques of penal change in women’s prisons have documented reform programs and their unintended gendered consequences (See Carlen, 1990; Hannah- Moffat, 2001; Davis, 2003; Hayman, 2006). This paper builds upon this important literature but with a different focus upon the use of reformist strategies within anti- carceral feminist campaigns. The objective is to explore how such campaigns have shaped trajectories of penal change in Victoria, Australia in the 1980s and 1990s. This paper focuses on the 1993 ‘Save Fairlea’ Prison protests that above all aimed to end 1 Bree Carlton is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology in the School of Social Sciences, Monash University, Australia. Thanks go to Amanda George, Catherine Gow and the amazing women of Flat Out Inc for their support and contributions to this research. Thanks to Emma Russell for the many discussions and collaborations, which have fed this research. Many thanks Alisoun Neville, Steve Tombs, Joe Sim, David Brown and the anonymous reviewers for their suggestions that have strengthened this paper.