Marking Time in the Golden State
Women's Imprisonment in California

This 2005 book examines how women prisoners' lives changed over time and how they were affected by a new generation of prisons.

Candace Kruttschnitt (Author), Rosemary Gartner (Author)

9780521825580, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 8 November 2004

218 pages, 3 b/w illus. 16 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.49 kg

"Over the last four decades the experience of imprisonment has been mass distributed in the United States on a scale and to a degree of severity unprecedented in the history of democratic societies. During the same time, a once vigorous empirical sociology of the prison has largely slumbered, interrupted only by increasingly dark theoretical visions. This book is our wake up call." Jonathan Simon, University of California, Berkeley

In recent decades, the nature of criminal punishment has undergone change in the United States. This case study of women serving time in California in the 1960s and 1990s examines key points in this recent history. In this 2005 book, the authors begin with a look at imprisonment at the California Institution for Women in the early 1960s, when the rehabilitative model dominated official discourse. They compare women's experiences in the 1990s, at the California Institution for Women and the Valley State Prison, when the recent 'get tough' era was near its peak. Drawing on archival data, interviews, and surveys, their analysis considers the relationships among official philosophies and practices of imprisonment, women's responses to the prison regime, and relations between women prisoners. The experiences of women prisoners reflected the transformations Americans have witnessed in punishment over recent decades, but they also mirrored the deprivations and restrictions of imprisonment.

Introduction: the study unfolds
1. Women, crime and punishment
2. Entering the inmate's world: methods
3. Time after time: women's experiences of imprisonment at the California institution for women in the 1960s and the 1990s
4. Variations across time and place in women's prison experiences
5. Negotiating prison life: how women 'do time' in the punitive era of the 1990s
6. Conclusion: the spectrum of women prisoners' experiences
Appendix. Characteristics of interviewees
References.

Subject Areas: Crime & criminology [JKV], Gender studies, gender groups [JFSJ]