Breaking Women: Gender, Race, and the New Politics of Imprisonment

Breaking Women: Gender, Race, and the New Politics of Imprisonment
ISBN-10
0814761496
ISBN-13
9780814761496
Category
Social Science
Pages
272
Language
English
Published
2013-08-05
Publisher
NYU Press
Author
Jill A. McCorkel

Description

Since the 1980s, when the War on Drugs kicked into high gear and prison populations soared, the increase in women's rate of incarceration has steadily outpaced that of men. In Breaking Women, Jill A. McCorkel draws upon four years of on-the-ground research in a major US women's prison to uncover why tougher drug policies have so greatly affected those incarcerated there, and how the very nature of punishment in women's detention centres has been deeply altered as a result. Through compelling interviews with prisoners and state personnel, McCorkel reveals that popular so-called "habilitation" drug treatment programs force women to accept a view of themselves as inherently damaged, aberrant addicts in order to secure an earlier release. These programs work to enforce stereotypes of deviancy that ultimately humiliate and degrade the women. The prisoners are left feeling lost and alienated in the end, and many never truly address their addiction as the programs' organizers may have hoped. A fascinating and yet sobering study, Breaking Women foregrounds the gendered and racialized assumptions behind tough-on-crime policies while offering a vivid account of how the contemporary penal system impacts individual lives. Jill A. McCorkel is Associate Professor of Sociology at Villanova University.

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