'We will be written out of history': Feminist challenges to carceral violence and the activist archive

Feminist activism has played an important role in documenting, highlighting and challenging carceral violence against women within and beyond prison walls. Using the campaign against the punitive segregation of women in high-security men’s prisons in the 1980s and 1990s in Victoria, Australia, as a case study, we illustrate the value of the activist archive for critical prisons research. The activist archive has the potential to expose continuities in carceral violence, highlight the limitations and potentialities of legal and official oversight processes, and debunk official rhetoric of the prison’s reformative and rehabilitative potential. Our discussion demonstrates the extent to which the activist archive can yield a powerful arsenal of accounts, critiques and organising strategies for anti-carceral feminist movements.