Women Behind Bars: Gender And Race in US Prisons

Today's prisons are increasingly filled with poor, dark-skinned, single mothers locked up for low-level drug involvement with serious ramifications for the corrections system. Women Behind Bars offers the first comprehensive exploration of the challenges faced by incarcerated women in the United States. Young and Reviere show conclusively that serving time in prisons designed by and for men not only does little to address what landed women, particularly women of color, there in the first place, but also undermines their prospects for an improved life on the outside. Using a multifaceted race/class/gender lens, the authors make a convincing argument that women in prison are punished twice: first by their sentences, and again because the policies that govern time behind bars were not designed to address women's unique problems and responsibilities.