"Whores and thieves of the worst kind": a study of women, crime, and prisons, 1835-2000

Abstract

What type of women are sent to prison? How are these women prosecuted, and what are their crimes? This text traces the changing patterns of women's crime and punishment in a representative state from 1835 to 2000. Drawn from primary sources, the voices of female prisoners emerge poignantly as individuals tell their stories. Illinois - a large, industrial state with an ethnically and racially diverse population - provides the setting for exploring the interactions of gender, race and class in the justice system. From early times, women's prisons in Illinois reflected the dominant national models and trends in penology. Both typical and progressive, Illinois prisons provide information on factors affecting female incarceration, such as race, ethnicity, marital status, age, education and occupation. L. Mara Dodge tracks incarcerated women from the time they entered the criminal justice system and analyses the changes in penology. Assessing the approach of 1930s penology, she focuses on the Illinois State Reformatory for Women at Dwight - a model reformatory embodying the cottage-life ideal of Progressive Era reformers. Here, Dodge finds, female prisoners, while in theory being introduced to gentler ways of living, in fact were subjected to levels of surveillance and control more intensive than those of male prisons. Evidence shows that such reformatories succeeded not so much in creating more docile and dutiful subjects as in stirring resistance and fostering a powerful inmate subculture.