Women's Imprisonment

Abstract

Incarceration of women in the United States is at a historic high, but understanding of women's experiences in prison, their responses to treatment, their lives after prison, and how changing prison regimes have affected these things remains limited. Individual attributes, preprison experiences, and prison conditions are associated with how women respond to incarceration, but assessments of their joint and conditional influences are lacking. Needs assessments abound, but systematic evaluations of interventions based on these assessments are rare, as are studies of the long-term consequences of imprisonment. Understanding of ways women negotiate power and construct their lives in prison is greater than in the past; new theoretical frameworks have provided important insights, but fundamental questions remain unanswered.