Lives of Incarcerated Women


Book Description

Drawing on qualitative and quantitative research from around the world, this book brings together renowned international scholars to explore life-course perspectives on women’s imprisonment. Instead of covering only one aspect of women’s carceral experiences, this book offers a broader perspective that encompasses women’s pathways to prison, their prison experiences and the effects of these experiences on their children’s well-being, as well as their subsequent chances of desisting from crime. Encompassing perspectives from the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Scotland, the United States, Ukraine and Sri Lanka, this book uncovers the similarities across time and space in women offenders’ life histories and those of their children and examines the differences in women’s experiences and trajectories by shedding light on the moderating effects of particular cultural contexts. Lives of Incarcerated Women will be of interest to academics and students engaged in the study of punishment, penology, life-course criminology, women and crime and gender studies. It will also be of great interest to practitioners.




Interrupted Life


Book Description

"Striking, original, and stimulating. Even readers with extensive familiarity of the literature regarding women in prison will learn something new."--Mona Danner, PhD Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice




Resistance Behind Bars


Book Description

In 1974, women imprisoned at New York’s maximum-security prison at Bedford Hills staged what is known as the August Rebellion. Protesting the brutal beating of a fellow prisoner, the women fought off guards, holding seven of them hostage, and took over sections of the prison. While many have heard of the 1971 Attica prison uprising, the August Rebellion remains relatively unknown even in activist circles. Resistance Behind Bars is determined to challenge and change such oversights. As it examines daily struggles against appalling prison conditions and injustices, Resistance documents both collective organizing and individual resistance among women incarcerated in the U.S. Emphasizing women’s agency in resisting the conditions of their confinement through forming peer education groups, clandestinely arranging ways for children to visit mothers in distant prisons and raising public awareness about their lives, Resistance seeks to spark further discussion and research into the lives of incarcerated women and galvanize much-needed outside support for their struggles. This updated and revised edition of the 2009 PASS Award winning book includes a new chapter about transgender, transsexual, intersex, and gender-variant people in prison.




Inside This Place, Not of It


Book Description

People in U.S. prisons are routinely subjected to physical, sexual, and mental abuse. While this has been documented in male prisons, women in prison often suffer in relative anonymity. Women Inside addresses this critical social justice issue, empowering incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women to share the stories that have previously been silenced. Among the narrators: •Irma Rodriguez, in prison on drug charges. While in prison in 1990, Irma was diagnosed HIV positive, but after a decade and a half of aggressive and toxic treatment, Irma learned that she never had HIV. •Sheri Dwight, a domestic violence survivor who was sent to prison for attempting to kill her batterer. While in prison, she underwent surgery for abdominal pain and learned more than four years later that she had been sterilized without her consent.




Incarcerated Women


Book Description

The story of the rise of prisons and development of prison systems in the United States has been studied extensively in scholarship, but the experiences of female inmates in these institutions have not received the same attention. Historically, women incarcerated in prison, jails, and reformatories accounted for a small number of inmates across the United States. Early on, they were often held in prisons alongside men and faced neglect, exploitation, and poor living conditions. Various attempts to reform them, ranging from moral instruction and education to domestic training, faced opposition at times from state officials, prison employees, and even male prison reformers. Due to the consistent small populations and relative neglect the women often faced, their experiences in prison have been understudied. This collection of essays seeks to recapture the perspective on women’s prison experience from a range of viewpoints. This edited collection will explore the challenges women faced as inmates, their efforts to exert agency or control over their lives and bodies, how issues of race and social class influenced experiences, and how their experiences differed from that of male inmates. Contributions extend from the early nineteenth century into the twenty-first century to provide an opportunity to examine change over time with regards to female imprisonment. Furthermore, the chapters examine numerous geographic regions, allowing for readers to analyze how place and environment shapes the inmate experience.




Mean Lives, Mean Laws


Book Description

Oklahoma has long held the dubious honor of having the highest female incarceration rate in the country, nearly twice the national average. In this compelling new book, sociologist Susan Sharp sets out to discover just what has gone so wrong in the state of Oklahoma—and what that might tell us about trends in female incarceration nationwide. The culmination of over a decade of original research, Mean Lives, Mean Laws exposes a Kafkaesque criminal justice system, one that has no problem with treating women as collateral damage in the War on Drugs or with stripping female prisoners of their parental rights. Yet it also reveals the individual histories of women who were jailed in Oklahoma, providing intimate portraits of their lives before, during, and after their imprisonment. We witness the impoverished and abusive conditions in which many of these women were raised; we get a vivid portrait of their everyday lives behind bars; and we glimpse the struggles that lead many ex-convicts to fall back into the penal system. Through an innovative methodology that combines statistical rigor with extensive personal interviews, Sharp shows how female incarceration affects not only individuals, but also families and communities. Putting a human face on a growing social problem, Mean Lives, Mean Laws raises important questions about both the state of Oklahoma and the state of the nation.




Inner Lives


Book Description

Interviews with African American women in prison.




A Comprehensive Study of Female Offenders


Book Description

Few empirical studies have focused on women in prison. In the last few years, though, a number of studies have demonstrated that there are fundamental differences between male and female prisoners in an ever-changing penal system. Consequently, there has been a need for more comprehensive studies of female offenders for three primary reasons: (1) imperative research gaps remain to be bridged; (2) the female prison experience is not constant; and (3) prison rates for female offenders, especially minority offenders, have increased considerably in the last few years. A central goal of this book, then, is to provide a balance to the existing literature and research on female prisoners in the United States and, to an extent, abroad, focusing primarily on female offenders and using data gathered from the Wisconsin Department of Corrections. The book utilizes a comprehensive investigative approach by equating the experience of female offenders by the totality of circumstances within an historical, institutional, political, and ideological context. The critical objective is to offer an inclusive analysis of the things that are considered by female inmates to be the most significant before, during, and after their incarceration, as a way of better understanding the reasons that lead to their first incarceration as well as subsequent incarcerations. By reading this book, the reader will have a greater understanding of the many challenges facing female inmates, as well as the relationship between inmates, correctional officers and, by extension, society in general. Also provided is a series of policy recommendations throughout the book, particularly in the concluding chapter and epilogue.




Health Issues Among Incarcerated Women


Book Description

This text addresses the physical and mental needs of women prisoners and suggests that they can't be properly treated unless their lifestyles before, during, and after incarceration are considered. The book is useful for policy-makers as well as graduate students in the fields of criminal justice and health care.




Becoming Ms. Burton


Book Description

Winner of the 2018 National Council on Crime & Delinquency’s Media for a Just Society Awards Winner of the 2017 Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice “Valuable . . . [like Michelle] Alexander's The New Jim Crow.” —Los Angeles Review of Books “Susan Burton is a national treasure . . . her life story is testimony to the human capacity for resilience and recovery . . . [Becoming Ms. Burton is] a stunning memoir.” —Nicholas Kristof, in The New York Times Winner of the prestigious NAACP Image Award, a uniquely American story of trauma, incarceration, and "the breathtaking resilience of the human spirit" (Michelle Alexander) Widely hailed as a stunning memoir, Becoming Ms. Burton is the remarkable life story of the renowned activist Susan Burton. In this "stirring and moving tour-de-force" (John Legend), Susan Burton movingly recounts her own journey through the criminal justice system and her transformation into a life of advocacy. After a childhood of immense pain, poverty, and abuse in Los Angeles, the tragic loss of her son led her into addiction, which in turn led to arrests and incarceration. During the War on Drugs, Burton was arrested and would cycle in and out of prison for more than fifteen years. When, by chance, she finally received treatment, her political awakening began and she became a powerful advocate for "a more humane justice system guided by compassion and dignity" (Booklist, starred review). Her award-winning organization, A New Way of Life, has transformed the lives of more than one thousand formerly incarcerated women and is an international model for a less punitive and more effective approach to rehabilitation and reentry. Winner of an NAACP Image Award and named a "Best Book of 2017" by the Chicago Public Library, here is an unforgettable book about "the breathtaking resilience of the human spirit" (Michelle Alexander).