Emergent Conversation 25

This essay is part of the series
First Responders: Crises, Indeterminacies, and (Joyful) Determination in the Global South

By Angbeen Atif Mirza

In matters of criminal law, theory and practice teach law students that their work ends with the sentence: their client is either acquitted, or convicted and sentenced (Wexler 1970, 1050). For the incarcerated however, this is where the story begins. It is often a story of invisibility, of continuing a life while being forgotten. In the case of women, it is also often about being left behind by their family. In this brief account from District Jail, Sheikhupura, I discuss three main observations regarding the experience of incarcerated women: the spatial layout of the female barrack inside the prison, the commonality of experience of female inmates, and the bonds of kinship they seem to have developed in this transitory space. These observations were made during my visits to the prison to supervise the female students of my Prison Paralegal Clinic.[1]

Prison is meant to be a place of punishment and rehabilitation. It is not meant to be a permanent abode. Even in this place of transition, from criminal to reformed, many women are able to live relatively full lives, refusing to let their often-unjust circumstances stop them from living. 

Women and the Law in Pakistan

Mujhey parhna aata hai, merey paas Masters hai. (I can read, I have a Masters’ degree)

—Salma, inmate[2]
(Fieldnotes, April 2024)

As we made our way through the term, I had prepared the students to expect that their audience was largely unfamiliar with the law and it would not be appropriate to assume any prior knowledge on the prisoners’ part. According to Wexler (1970), legal education is often designed to train lawyers for a very particular kind of practice. This is true for legal education world over—the lawyer is prepared to represent rich clients. The hypothetical client is always an otherwise rich person who has come into conflict with the law: they want a divorce, they need a contract enforced, or a constitutional right has been violated. The underlying assumption in legal education is that our clients are people who are otherwise living comfortable lives, and once the lawyer’s job is done, they will return to this comfort (Wexler 1970, 1049).  Poor people, and the overwhelming majority of prisoners in Punjab, are not potential clients that our students are trained to serve.

Pakistan’s criminal justice system was designed by the British in the 1860s. Apart from some scattered amendments over the years, the structure remains largely the same as its colonial form. Ours is a system primarily meant to penalize and sentences are largely retributive in nature. Prison overcrowding is a great concern, with over three-fourths of prisoners still under-trial (National Commission for Human Rights, et al. 2024, 5, 11).

Our learners were approximately 25 women, mostly undergoing trial. The exact audience would vary slightly on any given day, depending on who received bail, was acquitted, or had just arrived on judicial remand. Although most of them could not read or write, this was not a rule that could be generalized. On their fourth visit, when one of my students offered to read a handout for a prisoner who had just joined our class and looked a little lost, she responded by very kindly but firmly letting my student know that she held a Master’s degree and was well able to read for herself.

The defining feature of our audience, however, was their unfamiliarity with the law, which lent itself to abuse by law enforcement personnel and lawyers alike. A prisoner on trial for murder signed a power of attorney allowing her lawyer to sell her land in order to pay for his services—but she never heard from him again. Other prisoners shared stories of police abuse, removal of burqas, illegal searches by male police officers and detention in police stations well beyond the legally permitted 24 hours.[2] Most of all, in a reflection of patriarchal cultures and the invisibility and disposability of women (Davis 2003, 71), they shared stories of how they were collateral damage in larger family disputes. Mothers-in-law, brothers-in-law, abusive husbands and community drug lords led to women, and in many cases, their infant children, landing in jail on trial for unfamiliar matters. As learners narrated their journeys, it soon became clear that they often shared a common experience of having been let down by all that they knew: their husbands, their lawyers, and the various support structures that existed to help them make it through their lives. Left behind by those who were their own, these women seemed to have found a semblance of community with each other. 

The Women’s Barrack of Sheikhupura District Jail

Locked from outside, the women’s prison is a small enclosure in the sprawling lands of the Sheikhupura District Jail. It is a nondescript building, particularly in comparison to the large enclosures of male barracks. One might even be forgiven for failing to notice it. It reminds me of Angela Davis’ (2003) observation regarding the invisibility of early women’s jails, when female prisoners were first separated from the men (71). The women’s prison exists, but is never of primary concern to the prison authorities, the civil-society organizations working for uplift, or even their own families, who are able to move on, remarry, have more children. Women can be forgotten in the prison’s unnoticeable, colonial space. Much like their lives in the patriarchal culture outside where they are firmly subservient to their male counterparts, here women are also engaged in invisible labor, and very often sequestered inside domestic spaces. In the women’s jail at Sheikhupura, there are limited opportunities for vocational skill development, or academic learning. In contrast to the male prison, and due to “limited resources,” there are hardly any opportunities to work for remission. The prison officers seem proud of the kitchen that has been designed for the women: “They like to cook their own food,” one tells us (Fieldnotes, April, 2024). It is unsurprising that women are expected to have no greater desire than engaging in the most mundane domestic tasks imaginable. Perhaps the image of women cooking together is meant to reform them back into the ideal womanhood, another goal of the original design of women’s prisons (Davis 2003, 70).

As you enter the barren-but-airy enclosure of the women’s prison, you are again reminded of the colonial nature of this structure (Alam 2022). Flowers are grown for the prison officers and guests to enjoy, as the fragrance does not reach the prisoners inside their enclosures. There is a small, triangular garden with a swing, slide, and monkey-bars set. This triangle is surrounded by barracks—dormitory style rooms holding between approximately 6 to 15 charpayees, one large screen television high up on the wall, a common toilet, and clean, tiled floors.[3] The women have joined their charpayees together to provide for the overcrowding—the Sheikhupura jail houses 50 women in a space built for 25. While the number of prisoners does not seem to be large, it is a 100 percent increase over the capacity of the prison. Women in Pakistan receive lenience under the law in the form of release on bail for all but the most heinous crimes, which are murder and human and drug trafficking crimes, often committed in gangs with men.[4]

On each trip, I would settle in a corner to observe my students conduct their activities, and to provide them with moral support in a new and unfamiliar place. I noticed that the inmates were all storing their personal belongings beneath their charpayees. Women would walk into the barrack, stop at a charpayee, lift the bedsheet that was hanging over, and either take or deposit a cooking utensil, as they went about their day. On our first visit, we were, perhaps naively, caught off guard by the scurrying of a rat; or was it a small cat in the corner of one of the barracks? The elderly woman whose charpayee gave the rat shelter smirked a little bit, and smacked a newspaper on the wall behind her—whether to scare the rat into re-appearing or receding, one could not be sure. Luckily, that was the last most of us saw of the rat, but we were informed by prisoners that the rat situation was far better than what it had been a few months earlier. Clearly, utensils are not the only things occupying the space beneath their beds!

Amma Jee: The Trouble Maker

The elderly lady of rat asylum was Amma Jee, sentenced to 25 years for murder 24 long years ago.[5] Over the course of our engagement, we learned that Amma Jee and her husband had been sentenced together. She had arrived in prison pregnant with their first—and only—child. Soon after, her husband was executed for his crime. Her daughter was delivered in prison and allowed to stay with her till the age of eight, as per prison policy at the time. At eight years of age, she was taken by relatives, they did not allow her to visit her mother—a cruel reminder of the ability to forget women behind bars. It was only when she married at the age of twenty-two that she came back to visit her mother, who is now eagerly awaiting completion of her sentence so she can live her remaining years with her daughter.

Amma Jee came to represent the face of Sheikhupura jail for us. We often wondered how she still had a twinkle in her eye, making jokes, instructing the women to pray for Palestine at prayer time, and playing the de facto manager of the prison. Over the course of 24 years, she had been moved across prisons, indicating that she had been considered a troublemaker by the prison administration. While the twinkle in her eyes assured us that she may have caused trouble for the discipline-enforcing prison staff, we found that she still retained her zest for life. Despite having spent a lifetime behind bars, she was still in good spirits and could finally see the light at the end of this very long tunnel, a time when she could resume life once more. Perhaps most surprising was her role as babysitter for the Deputy Superintendent’s three-year-old son. On paper it sounded outrageous—a convicted murderer was the babysitter of choice for the head prison officer in the women’s prison. In person, it was the most natural thing imaginable and we would often walk into the office on Friday mornings to find Amma Jee handling the infant while his mother attended to her work. 

Relationships within the Barracks

After only a few visits, I observed that that there was a special type of kinship among these women who had no prior relation to each other. While participating in our activities, they came together as family: sometimes annoyed by each other, at other times jokingly making fun of others and keeping things light. At all times, however, they existed as a community. Ironically, for some women, life in prison might even seem like a refreshing break from prior lives, where girls are straitjacketed into domestic roles quite young. Child marriages are common in Pakistan, and many women experience physical and sexual violence at home. The space of the jail shielded them from some of these unfortunate outcomes.[6] The women laughed together when doing group work in our lessons; they held each other’s babies, and scolded the toddlers when they were disruptive. It was no different than had they been aunties and relatives to these children. They held space for each other when they missed home, and brought each other back into discipline when they stepped out of line in tone of voice or choice of word.

Perhaps most surprising was the bond between the staff and prisoners. Alternately stern and supportive, the staff of the prison administration seemed to be doing their best with the very meagre resources provided to them. Though not all of them displayed the same level of empathy, those that did took on roles of caregiving as well, checking up on the prisoners’ mental states, and giving them pep talks to keep them from descending into permanent states of depression. They were more hostel warden than prison warder.

In this invisible space that people outside view with distrust and disdain, women form a community that surpasses rank and label. When my student appeared to appreciate the aroma of cooking food, another prisoner, Samina, six-year-old J’s mother, rushed to open her brand-new packet of nimko, pouring it out onto a clean plate to serve because she thought her guest was hungry. [7] She did not pause to think that she might want to save this coveted snack for her young daughter who lived with her in the prison. It was just hospitality that drove her actions—this prison was her domain and she was responsible for making her guests feel welcome.

Conclusion

Prisons are worlds of contrasts. The contrasts we observed between prison enclosures, in the variety of individual prisoners, in the kinds of lives the women had left behind and the unexpected community they had created for themselves inside this confining space were unexpected, but not always surprising. These women came to play a range of roles in each other’s lives, as if they were stepping in for family: taking care of each other, raising each other’s children, rooting for each other, and applying make-up together before weekly family visits.

This particular jail was also one where the prisoners formed a close-knit community.  Sharing clothes, making jokes, and keeping their spirits up, these mostly forgotten women forge bonds of kinship, fondness, and friendship in a place that many people view with fear. Fear and deference are defining features of many women’s lives in Pakistan where they face risks of brutality and violence in almost all realms of life, far beyond the prison.  Ironically, it is in prison, where their freedoms and liberty are formally taken away, that many women are able to experience liberty and a freedom from fear for the first time in their lives. In the fragmented landscape of Pakistan and the glaring absence of access to safe public spaces for women, the Sheikhupura prison—a site of carceral surveillance and control—is an unexpected site of women’s camaraderie, kinship, and bonding.

Angbeen Atif Mirza is an Assistant Professor at the Shaikh Ahmad Hassan School of Law (SAHSOL), Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). Angbeen’s primary area of interest lies in clinical legal education, specifically street law, live client clinics, and access to justice work. She is interested in the scholarship of teaching and learning, and works with the LUMS Learning Institute to keep innovating with her teaching methods. She is also interested in women’s equality and citizenship in Pakistan.

Notes

[1] At the Shaikh Ahmad Hassan School of Law (SAHSOL) in Lahore, Pakistan, the Prison Paralegal Clinic is a specialized street law clinic; this means that it engages with an audience “on the street” about their rights and obligations under the law. Working in groups, students conducted research, based on which they designed interactive and engaging lesson plans with their prison audience in mind. These lessons were delivered once a week for approximately two months.

[2] All references to individuals are through pseudonyms to protect the participants’ privacy.

[3] A burqa is a full body covering, like a veil worn religiously and culturally by women. It is sometimes seen as a symbol of purity, and removal is a gross violation of personal space and even a woman’s honor.

[4] Charpayees are single person beds made of rope and held together by a wooden or metallic frame. This makes them a comfortable resting place for one individual, who is able to lie between the frames.

[5] The Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898 governs release on bail. Crimes are divided into two types: bailable, for which bail is granted as of right, and non-bailable, where bail is not granted as of right, particularly if reasonable grounds for guilt are shown before Court. Courts have been vested with the discretion to grant bail to women, children, sick and infirm persons even when they are arrested for a non-bailable offence.

[6] Although literally translated, it means mother, “Amma” is a deferential term used to address an older woman. In line with cultural practice, people are referred to as sister, or aunt out of respect. Amma Jee is another such term.

[7] Policy Brief on Gender Based Violence, Punjab Commission on the Status of Women, available at https://pcsw.punjab.gov.pk/system/files/gender.pdf.

[8] A savory snack made of gramflour.

Works Cited

Alam, Qadeer. 2022. “Prison Reform in Pakistan: What Is Needed and Why?” University of Oxford Faculty of Law Blogs, September 2, 2022. Accessed November 10, 2025: https://blogs.law.ox.ac.uk/centre-criminology-blog/blog-post/2022/09/prison-reform-pakistan-what-needed-and-why.

Davis, Angela Y. 2003. Are Prisons Obsolete? Open Media Series. Seven Stories Press.

National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR), National Academy for Prisons Administration (NAPA), and Justice Project Pakistan (JPP). 2025. Pakistan’s Prison Landscape: Trends, Data, and Developments in 2024. Lahore and Islamabad:  NCHR, NAPA, and JPP. Accessed November 10, 2025:  https://jppprisonreforms.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/JPP_Prison_Data_Report_2024.pdf.

Punjab Commission on the Status of Women. 2021. “Gender Based Violence in Punjab Policy Brief.” Accessed archived document November 11, 2025:  https://web.archive.org/web/20210813114809/https://pcsw.punjab.gov.pk/system/files/gender.pdf.

Wexler, Stephen. 1970. “Practicing Law for Poor People” Yale Law Journal 79 (6): 1049-1068.