USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP

By L. Mara Dodge

FROM THE INTRODUCTION: “This study explores the treatment of women in Illinois prisons from the early nineteenth to the late twentieth century. Although it fouses on a small minority of women-convicted felons--it asks far broader questions: Who were these women? What were their crimes? How and why did patterns of criminality, prosecution, conviction, and sentencing shift over the decades? How did factors such as race, class, ethnicity, age, marital status, reputation, and social standing influence the chain of official decisions that led from arrest to prosecution to conviction and, finally, to sentencing? Once women were sentenced, what was the character of their prison experience, and how did that experience evolve over time? How were women affected by shifting philosophies of punishment and rehabilitation; by changing ideologies of prison superintendents, psychiatrists, sociologists, and parole board members? What was the nature of discipline, surveillance, and social control within women's prisons? And finally, how did women resist, subvert, or accommodate prison regimes?

DeKalb, Illinois. Northern Illinois University Press. 2002. 347p.