An award-winning investigative journalist examines increasing rates of women imprisonment in today's America, in a report that draws on interviews with inmates, correctional officers, and administrators to offer insight into the societal impact of female incarceration. Original.

This singular history of a prison, and the queer women and trans people held there, is a window into the policing of queerness and radical politics in the twentieth century. The Women's House of Detention, a landmark that ushered in the modern era of women's imprisonment, is now largely forgotten. But when it stood in New York City's Greenwich Village, from 1929 to 1974, it was a nexus for the tens of thousands of women, transgender men, and gender-nonconforming people who inhabited its crowded cells. Some of these inmates--Angela Davis, Andrea Dworkin, Afeni Shakur--were famous, but the vast majority were incarcerated for the crimes of being poor and improperly feminine. Today, approximately 40 percent of the people in women's prisons identify as queer; in earlier decades, that percentage was almost certainly higher. Historian Hugh Ryan explores the roots of this crisis and reconstructs the little-known lives of incarcerated New Yorkers, making a uniquely queer case for prison abolition--and demonstrating that by queering the Village, the House of D helped defined queerness for the rest of America. From the lesbian communities forged through the Women's House of Detention to the turbulent prison riots that presaged Stonewall, this is the story of one building and much more: the people it caged, the neighborhood it changed, and the resistance it inspired.

The story of a woman in the prison system and her experiences, both while incarcerated and after she is paroled.

A concise survey of the treatment of jailed women in America since the early 1800s, their unique problems, the effect on their families, and the state of prisons today. Focusing on an often overlooked subject, this volume explores women's incarceration, from the first women-only prison to modern state-of-the-art facilities. It explores controversies, problems, and solutions, such as excessive discipline, the lack of training programs, sexual abuse, medical services, and visitation policies. The book also investigates key issues such as the background of inmates, the disproportionate number of African American and Hispanic prisoners because of the "war on drugs," and how women cope with the separation from their children and families. A full chapter is devoted to important people and events, from the first female jail keeper in 1822 to changing prison goals and the impact of feminism.

Inside This Place, Not of It reveals some of the most egregious human rights violations within women’s prisons in the United States. Here, in their own words, thirteen narrators recount their lives leading up to incarceration and their harrowing struggle for survival once inside. Among the narrators: Theresa, who spent years believing her health and life were in danger, being aggressively treated with a variety of medications for a disease she never had. Only on her release did she discover that an incompetent prison medical bureaucracy had misdiagnosed her with HIV. Anna, who repeatedly warned apathetic prison guards about a suicidal cellmate. When the woman killed herself, the guards punished Anna in an attempt to silence her and hide their own negligence. Teri, who was sentenced to up to fifty years for aiding and abetting a robbery when she was only seventeen. A prison guard raped Teri, who was still a teenager, and the assaults continued for years with the complicity of other staff.

"If Kafka had been a feminist, his prisoner might have had Nawal el Sa'adawi's feistiness, maybe, like her, he would have hoed a prison garden, led veiled and unveiled cellmates in rebellious calisthenics, strategized with a murderess to foil state illogic. This book gives me hope, even makes me laugh."—Cynthia Enloe, author of The Morning After

It is old news that the conditions and policies of women's prisons are different from those for incarcerated men. Less evident, however, is how gender differences shape those policies, and how gender identity and roles shape women's adaptation and resistance to prison culture and control. The papers in this collection explore how the gender-based attitudes that women bring to prison frame how they respond to the prison environment -- and how gender stereotypes continue to affect the treatment and opportunities of incarcerated women today. It looks particularly at how the personal and social problems imported into the prison setting become part of the intricate web of prison culture and how extensively women's prison experience reflects the control and domination they experienced in the outside world.