“Obedience is a Sure Favor”: How Prison Religion Leads to Material Inequality

• In Event: 2132 - Topics in Criminology

Abstract

The prison experience is marked by hardships, deprivation, and state control. Yet research on the qualitative experience of incarceration also demonstrates how inmates face the “pains of imprisonment” head-on, and actively carve out a life for themselves behind bars. Drawing on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork inside a U.S. state women’s prison, this paper considers how religion structures material resources that shape daily life for incarcerated women. Protestant programs – largely evangelical and charismatic in denominational flavor – were the most resource-rich, with Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, and secular inmates receiving fewer material benefits for their participation. The ways in which religious programs structured prisoners’ adaptation to prison deprivations contributes to larger debates on inequality inside the already-unequal system of mass incarceration. Additionally, this paper seeks to add to our intersectional understanding of punishment around race, class, and gender. Broadly, this project seeks to uncover the ways religion structures and stratifies the prison experience for female inmates in a U.S. state prison.

Author

• Rachel Ellis, University of Missouri-St. Louis